


On the Wings of an Angel

by phoenix_writing



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-15
Updated: 2013-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:53:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21879415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenix_writing/pseuds/phoenix_writing
Summary: When Arthur overhears a conversation that he shouldn't have in the dreamshare, he reacts quickly and decisively, setting in motion a chain of events that leads all the way to limbo and threatens the lives and sanity of those he cares about most—as well as threatening to reveal his deepest secret. Arthur/Eames.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Inception Big Bang





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posting this from 2013 and my LJ.
> 
> Original Notes:  
> This is my first Big Bang, and it's been great to collaborate. Creepylicious is a fantastic artist, and it was so wonderful to see scenes from my fic appear in the flesh (as it were). Thanks to SapphireQuill'sFic for beta-ing (especially as she did it during NaNoWriMo), as well as Creepylicious for her advice. All mistakes are my own.
> 
> The explicit content is in the coda only, so skip that if you'd prefer a "clean" version. ;)
> 
> Lovely art is here (and NSFW): <https://archiveofourown.org/works/667155>.

_Part One_

Arthur had watched the news broadcast that showed Fischer breaking up his company, and he'd sent the link to everyone else.

Eames had made a snide comment about Arthur not trusting the rest of them, and Arthur had reminded himself that the removal of personal interaction thanks to e-mail meant that he was not going to give in to his first impulse to snap at the other man.

This was probably just as well, really, because it would have made it harder to explain why the two of them were now doing a job together. Why, _technically_ , Arthur had invited Eames to join him on the job. Eames liked to remind him of this fact. Arthur liked to shoot Eames pointed glares and not rise to his bait, just think of really creative ways that he could kill the other man in dreams.

Arthur didn't feel that guilty about Eames; Eames could take care of himself. Ariadne, on the other hand, was still brand new.

But she was her own person, and they'd needed an architect after the last one had up and left. Even with the insanity of the Fischer job—or perhaps because of it—Ariadne had not lost the drive to dream, and Arthur had been pretty sure that she simply would have found a job on her own if they hadn't involved her.

Now, however, he wished that he had cut off all contact with her after the Fischer job and had left her to have her own life, had left her like they had left Dom.

He had briefly thought about calling the man, he had, but it was still too soon after he had been reunited with James and Phillipa, and Arthur had been determined not to mess with that. (Besides, Marie had asked Arthur to stay away for a while, to give the kids a chance to get used to their dad being around and the one they could depend on, and Arthur could respect that. If there was a little part of him that felt as though he was losing his babies, well, it only went to show that he’d gotten too attached. They’d never been his kids.)

Of course, if Dom had been here, they would have made a full team and could have worked out a job on their own.

Instead, they'd teamed up with an unknown Extractor and an Architect, a fact which hadn't seemed disastrous until this particular moment.

Because now, Eames was missing—not killed but dragged off by subcons—Arthur was bleeding from a shot to the arm where he'd shielded Ariadne, and none of them had the slightest idea what was really going on—apart from the fact that their Extractor appeared to have betrayed them and they were pinned down by militarised subcons.

Arthur spared a brief moment to be mildly impressed with whoever had done their intel; he had been fooled into thinking that this job was straightforward, and he had not found evidence quickly enough that this was not the case.

Arthur shrugged out of his suit jacket and wrapped a long strip of fabric around his wound, tightening it painfully but hopefully enough to stop the bleeding. Ariadne was covering him, and he was rather relieved that he had been giving her that training, though he sort of wished it wasn't necessary.

He knew that there weren't that many years between them, but he couldn't help but still view her as a young adult. She lacked the experience that had honed him—and there were some events in his past that he hoped that she would never have to experience.

He got the suit jacket back on, tested the mobility of his arm and decided that it would have to do.

"We need to find Eames."

"Agreed."

She looked pale but very determined, and he wondered if the lure of the architecture was going to be enough to keep her in the business.

They hadn't had a single job just go right since she had started.

"We're going to have to be quiet and unobtrusive."

She rolled her eyes. "Seriously, Arthur, I might not be the point man, but I get how this is done."

"We're in a militarised subconscious without adequate equipment or weaponry, and if we garner someone's attention before we find Eames, this could be the end of it. I just don't want you to do anything clever."

He thought all he was going to do was offend her, but the hardness in her eyes softened and she reached out to squeeze his arm.

"We're going to find him, Arthur, don't worry."

Arthur nearly opened his mouth to tell her that that wasn't the point he had been trying to make at all but realised that that would not speed along their progress.

They _did_ need to find Eames, and they had been forced to run for it after Eames had been captured because there had simply been too many projections.

Recon was one of Arthur's especial skills, though, and while Ariadne was nowhere up to his level, she was very bright and quite dedicated once she had settled on a plan.

She crept after him to the best of her abilities, carefully following where he led.

They needed to find Eames, and they needed to get him out of here, and they weren't going to be able to do that if they drew too much attention on themselves.

Fortunately, Arthur was altogether capable of tracking, and the projections weren't being that careful. They'd been militarised, clearly, but definitely not for stealth.

Arthur found his temper rising as he began to spot drops and smears of blood. It made it easier to track, but Arthur was _not_ pleased with what it indicated.

He pushed the worry into a small corner of his mind, compartmentalising and letting the emotion fade away because he needed to concentrate right now.

He was glad that he was moving cautiously; had he been creeping forward any less prudently, he would have walked right into a line of subcons. They were protecting a warehouse which was large and dark and pretty clearly their destination.

Arthur didn't think he would like any of the reasons why they would be taking Eames into a warehouse, but he wasn't thinking about that, either.

He shushed Ariadne with a finger to her lips when she started to question him—albeit quietly—and then eyed the area, scanning for weaknesses.

Ariadne had designed the level, but they now knew they didn't know enough about the person who was dreaming it or the changes that he may have made.

At first glance, it was the perfect choice. There were no ladders, doors, or other visible points of entry that were not the main entrance clearly guarded by too many subcons. There was a small chance that they could fight their way through, but they didn't know what they would find inside, and Arthur wasn't about to risk Eames on such a gamble.

They needed to see inside. There were very small windows very high up the building's walls.

He led Ariadne on a carefully silent, twisting route round to the other side of the building and finally found what he was looking for.

He eyed the distance between the two buildings critically, then eyed Ariadne, frowning at his mental calculations. Well, first thing was first.

He retreated several blocks, looping around to the back of the adjacent building as far away from the guarding subcons as possible. There were patrols, too, and they couldn't be too careful.

The adjacent building had a ladder that led to the roof, and Arthur and Ariadne climbed it hurriedly before sneaking across the roof until they were standing as close to the guarded building as possible.

"Are you _insane_?" Ariadne hissed.

He shook his head in a slight but definite negation, already slipping out of his shoes and socks. While he made some modification to his dress shoes in every dream to ensure that he had good traction, he needed to do this as quietly as possible.

"I can look through the window from the roof and assess the situation."

"You can't—"

"Wait here."

He didn't give her further chance to argue, just withdrew far enough to give himself a good running lead and then vaulted from one roof to the other, turning the landing into a roll that broke his impact and kept it as quiet as possible.

Looking back, he could see that Ariadne was gaping at him in absolute shock. He offered her a small wave to show her that he was all right and then set to immediately climbing over the edge of the building, hanging from the edge of the roof to get a vantage point that allowed him to see the interior of the building.

(Eames always made snide remarks about his upper body strength; if only he knew. The shot arm ached a bit, but Arthur ignored it. He had other priorities at the moment.)

It was dark, but there was just enough light to be able to see that Eames was there, as well as the Extractor, and both of them were attached to a PASIV.

Fuck.

There was only one subcon standing guard, showing that all the effort had been put into protecting the building from the outside.

That was something, at least. He didn't like any of his options, but this was hardly the first time he'd been in that position. Another dream layer meant that Eames had been under there a lot longer than Arthur and Ariadne had been up here, and their situation was hardly going to get less precarious.

He pulled himself back onto the roof.

First off, he needed to get Ariadne over here with the least chance that anyone would notice.

She looked infuriated and incredulous by the time he'd finished miming and then silently producing the pulley that he wanted on his roof and expected her to do the same on hers. The more minor the change, the less it effected; the smaller the distance, the less chance any notice would be taken.

A bridge would have been easiest for her; the rope pulley was clearly not a favourite, and had they been able to risk yelling at one another, he was quite sure that he would have got a comprehensive argument out of her. As it was, they both knew that their time was limited and they couldn't risk being heard, which meant that he pulled her over, hauled her up onto the roof, and got punched in the arm—and then a guilty apology because she'd forgotten that he'd been shot.

"Eames and Collins are attached to a PASIV."

Her eyes flew, startled, to his.

"There isn't supposed to be another level to the dream, is there?"

He shook his head. "And we can be quite sure that Eames didn't suddenly come up with this after being dragged away by subcons, which means that the Mark is the one dreaming this level, and we're left with a lot of unknowns, including the stability of the dream we're currently in."

He fastened a silencer to his gun and passed it and a grenade to Ariadne, who looked alarm but not panicked.

"If you position yourself at the corner of the building, you'll have a good view of the entrance and the activity down there. Can you take care of the two of us while I go to get Eames?"

"We'd have a better chance if the two of us were down there."

He shook his head. "Someone needs to look after the bodies on this level."

"It'll be faster with two."

He shook his head. "Look, Ariadne, we'll need to get back up to this level before we're killed in it, and it's only a matter of time until they realise what's happened. The Mark is still around somewhere on this level, and we don't know if he's involved or a dupe. Just like anyone else, you shoot him if you see him try to get into the building."

She was frowning. "We're going to have to fight to get into the building, aren't we?"

He shook his head. "I'll go in through the window. You start shooting if anyone tries to get in."

"Why can't I come with you?" she asked. "How much difference do you think I can make here?"

"Once they see you, you can do as much manipulation as you need because they'll already be onto you. Pull out all the stops on the fire power. A minute more here gives us ten more minutes there, Ariadne," he pointed out firmly. "Collins knows us. He'll be on the look out down there. You'll only gather attention."

"And you won't?" she demanded in a fierce whisper.

He offered her his most reassuring smile. "I've been doing this a long time. Don't worry about me."

She looked doubtful, but he made sure to offer her his most reassuring Point Man expression, the one that convinced everyone that he'd planned for everything and it was going to be all right.

Finally, she offered a nod.

"I'll set the timer for three minutes your time one minute from now, so that’s four minutes from now.” She set her watch when he eyed her wrist leadingly. “But regardless, when your kick comes, you get out.”

She started to protest immediately, but he overrode her.

"We don't know the Chemist who supplied us, and we don't know why the second level is stable."

Her eyes widened. "A sedative?"

"It's at least a distinct possibility, and it's one that I don't really want to test."

She nodded, reaching out to squeeze his arm. "Be safe."

He nodded and watched as she settled at the corner he'd indicated, gun in hand and grenade sitting next to her. Arthur loved what he did, but there were days where he wished that he'd never even started, that he hadn't helped drag anyone into this life.

Still, he trusted that he'd relocated her to the most useful safest spot until the kick came; he didn't like leaving her alone under the circumstances, but he didn't know what else to do.

It was almost definitely going to be safer than where he was going—and he wasn't really anxious to explain to her how he was going to get there.

She had evidently assumed that he was going to be able to climb down from the window, that there was something other than the sheer drop that had greeted him when he had peered through.

He was sure it was one of the reasons that all but one subcon was waiting outside. If Arthur didn't miss his guess, the lone man was to shoot Eames if he somehow managed to escape from Collins in the next dream level.

Arthur _so_ didn't think so.

It was a minor change to give the windows hinges, carefully oiled, of course; there was no way that he could cleanly and quietly remove and dispose of the large pane of glass in some legitimate way.

He shot the projection as soon as he had a clean shot. Ensuring that no alarm was raised, Arthur slithered in through the window, extended as far as he could hanging onto the windowsill and then let go.

He hit the ground lighter than he would have if this had been reality, gun in hand a scarce second later, but nothing moved.

He hurried over to the PASIV and saw that there was almost five minutes on the timer. That should give him plenty of a head start—assuming that the thirty minutes of second-level time he was giving himself was enough to find Eames to begin with.

But he was pretty fucking determined.

He reeled out another line and set himself between Collins and Eames. He hoped that he’d have plenty of time advantage, but if something went wrong, if Eames was badly injured, Arthur would need those extra moments to protect him.

He set his own timer, and went under.

The lounge- _cum_ -casino was classy, as far as set-ups of their kind went. The lighting was low enough to seem intimate but bright enough to allow everyone to gamble with as much care as they wished.

Servers were discreet, music was a little on the sultry side and loud enough to make it hard to hear from one table to another but not so loud that it became difficult to converse at your own table.

Expecting the unexpected was pretty much a requirement when it came to dream-sharing. As point man, it was his job to plan for various scenarios, which meant that he had _lots_ of different ideas percolating in his brain at any given time.

The most likely scenarios here had been imprisonment, torture, or death with some form of extraction.

Finding Eames and Collins seated at a Blackjack table playing cards was a little disconcerting. Eames looked completely unharmed, calm and at ease—in his element, even, because Eames was a gambler. Collins seemed equally unperturbed, and Arthur couldn’t prevent the sick feeling that had blossomed in the pit of his stomach.

Why all the subterfuge for _this_?

Arthur needed to know what was going on, and he needed to find out fast. Did Eames not realise it was a dream? He should recognize Collins, so if he didn’t, there was something more dangerous going on. What if it was a new formula that caused short-term amnesia? What if Eames was being threatened in some way?

It was time for his secret weapon. He’d stayed carefully out of sight of the table, but there was no way that he could hear what was being said from this distance. So he ducked into the ladies’ room when no one was looking, and a moment later, a beautiful blonde, curvy in all the right places, emerged.

Arthur was _never_ Hope where others could see him. Not even Dom and Mal had caught a glimpse of her—which made her a highly effective disguise, under the circumstances.

Not questioning why he was willing to break his cardinal rule just now, he sauntered over to the blackjack table, moving slowly enough that it didn’t look as though he had an agenda. There were gambling projections everywhere, enough to give him a good cover, although Collins and Eames were the only people apart from the dealer at this particular table.

Collins frowned at Hope’s arrival.

“We’re busy.”

Hope pouted a little. “You looked like you were in need of a bit of fun.”

Collins opened his mouth again, but Eames overrode him, staring at Hope with a very clear leer.

“And you look like you could be _all_ sorts of fun, love.” Pointedly, he added, “What does it matter if she stays, Collins?”

So that would be a no on the amnesia or lack of knowledge that they were in a dream.

Collins rolled his eyes but subsided, and Hope cosied up to Eames, smiling at him with sultry promise and tucking her arm through his. Eames winked.

Arthur was trying desperately not to get distracted by the fact that he had never voluntarily gotten this close to Eames before. He was positive it shouldn’t be normal for the man to be this warm. The fact that Arthur had to fight an impulse to lean into the man and bury his face against Eames’s neck was just … wrong.

“So, what do you say?” Collins asked as the dealer resumed the game interrupted by Hope’s arrival.

“Hit me,” Eames told the dealer, and Collins gave a huff of exasperation.

Arthur wondered how he’d never noticed that there was a small scar behind Eames’s right ear. Where had it come from?

“Can I trust you?” Eames asked.

“Of course.” Arthur’s answer came definitely and without thought, and Hope added a flirtatious smile and traced a pattern on Eames’s arm with her finger. “Why would I want you to lose?”

Eames patted the hand that was tucked into his and looked at his cards. He had eighteen now, and Arthur knew he wasn’t going to stay.

Collins looked as though he wasn’t going to play until Eames answered his question.

Eames stared pointedly at the cards until the other man took another card with a very clear attitude of going through the motions. Arthur could have told Collins that Eames loved to get under people’s skin. Calmly playing the game as though it meant nothing to him would have been far more effective—and far less telling.

With a little smirk, Eames motioned for another card, and said, “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“So you can’t provide me with the services I require?”

“Of course I can. But Cobb’s out of the business.”

Only years of training ensured Arthur gave nothing away. Eames went bust at 26, as Arthur had predicted, and the next hand began, Eames not batting an eyelash at how much money he’d just lost. Of course, he wouldn’t have done that in the real world, either. Arthur had seen the other man gamble.

“He’s the best,” Collins said, waving only when Eames prompted him for another card.

“ _Was_ the best,” Eames corrected with heavy emphasis. “He’s been off since his wife offed herself, and he’s not coming back. Complete non-entity these days.”

Oh, Eames was _so_ lucky Hope was here, because Arthur would have fucking punched Eames’s teeth out for that comment. Never mind his field training; he wondered if Eames had any idea of the things that Mal had taught him and the numbers of ways that Arthur could kill him without anyone being the wiser.

Eames continued. “The chemist is immaterial, and you’ve seen Ariadne work. She’s a kid.”

“She shows some promise.”

“She needs years of training—if she lasts that long.” Eames’s voice eloquently expressed his doubt. “She’s in it for the _architecture_.”

They shared a smarmy laugh, and Hope joined in politely if a bit vacantly, a light chime of sound that made Eames’s lips twist into a more genuine smile—or least one whose motives Arthur preferred, and it was saying something when a lustful leer from Eames was a good thing.

The game resumed, focus holding for a few seconds before Collins spoke.

“So you’re saying Arthur is my only concern.”

“He’s one of those dangerous creatures who refuses to have simple motives. He’s not in it for the money or the architecture or the thrill, which means he’s much harder to buy off. He trailed after Cobb like a puppy for _years_ when anyone with an ounce of common sense and self-preservation would have walked away, and yet now here he is again, dreaming once more. He’s methodical to a fault and has an unfortunate level of training.”

“It sounds as though it would be in my best interest to eliminate him.”

Eames laughed. “That would be the easy thing to do—and it’ll certainly be your only option once he realises what you’ve done.”

Arthur’s blood ran cold.

Collins’ lips curled up in triumph. “So you _are_ in.”

“You make a compelling monetary argument. And Arthur’s not very hard to control once you understand him. He likes competence, rules, order, efficiency.”

“That’s something I could work out within five minutes of meeting the man. What does that tell us?”

Eames looked impatient. “Apart from the fact that it makes him an information goldmine? And it’s an easy way to lure him into _anything_? He stayed with Cobb for _years_.” Collins still didn’t get it. Arthur was pretty sure that even Hope playing the dumb blonde got it with all the leading that Eames was doing, but the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach ensured that he wasn’t at all tempted to interject. “There were whole years where Cobb wasn’t any of the above, where he was imploding from the inside out. And Arthur was right there by his side.”

Collins was still waiting for more, and Arthur wasn’t sure if he was as dumb as he was acting or if he wanted to ensure that Eames had a whole program in place.

“Win the man’s trust, and you’re golden. He’ll leave aside all his rules and all his regulations for his _friends_.”

Eames said the word mockingly, like it was the biggest weakness in the world.

Of course, just at the moment, Arthur was inclined to agree with him.

“You expect me to believe that you fit that bill, Mr. Eames?” Collins asked, eyes assessing, the fact that he was an extractor more obvious than it had been throughout the rest of the discussion.

“ _You_ certainly don’t. The cock-up on this job alone is going to ensure he doesn’t think much of you. I, on the other hand, have already done all the work. Who invited me onto this job?”

They laughed again, Hope joining in once more; it wasn’t hard to sound a little bewildered, as though she hadn’t followed most of the conversation.

"I'll need a couple of weeks," Eames continued.

"That long?" Collin sounded surprised. "I was given to understand you were the best."

"I am." Nothing but certainty in the other man's voice. "But we're only going to get the chance to do this once, and that means treading very carefully."

"Very well."

"No contact top-side," Eames continued. "Arthur may be a stick-in-the-mud, but he's not stupid, and his intel-gathering skills are unparalleled."

Collins conceded this with an inclination of his head; Arthur couldn't blame him for looking somewhat doubtful, given how much Arthur had screwed this one up.

“He’ll be concerned that I was grabbed by the subcons; time to get this show on the road."

Eames raised a gun, and Hope gasped.

Collins reached over to wrap a hand around Eames's wrist in a grip that looked as though it would leave bruises.

"I don't have a lot of use for you if you're in limbo."

The gun disappeared as precipitously as it had arrived, and Eames grimaced faintly.

Collins smiled a very satisfied smile.

"I've got the Mark up there dreaming; told him it was a training exercise. No way he could keep it stable enough for a second level. We've got," he checked his watch, "twenty-five minutes left."

Eames was on his feet and had Hope in his arms almost before Arthur could track the motion.

"In that case," Eames said with that bright leer firmly in place once more, "if you'll excuse me, Collins, I have a beautiful woman to dance with."

Hope smiled up at him, altogether satisfied, while Arthur tracked their growing distance from Collins and considered the merits of shooting both of them right now and having done.

He spared a moment to be grateful that the theory of a sedative had occurred to him and to hope that Ariadne was still safe.

Still. Shooting people was one thing; turning them into vegetables and leaving them prisoners of their own subconscious was something else. Plus, it was Collins’ dream; Arthur couldn’t guarantee that he’d get out in time if he shot the man in the head.

And while as far as he was concerned, Eames altogether deserved a bullet between the eyes, the man had been there for him at a time when Arthur had needed it.

He would consider this the marker called due and the slate wiped clean (if only Eames knew that had he made his opinion of Mal and her death plain, he would already be dead).

Eames pulled Hope into his arms. It was disconcerting to feel this small against him. Although he was broader and more muscular than Arthur, they were usually about the same height. The current configuration was not comfortable at all, especially under the circumstances.

Eames’s fingers felt like a burning brand pressed against the small of Hope’s back. He felt warm and smelled male and that indefinable “Eames” that was tying Arthur’s stomach in knots that were altogether less pleasant than they usually were—and he’d found them problematic enough previously. Now, though, he felt seriously sick to his stomach and could only be grateful for years of experience to keep him focussed and faking it.

He compartmentalised his feelings, promised himself that he could freak out and maybe shoot Eames later, and then concentrated on the feelings that would ensure that he didn’t give the game away. Eames felt warm and steady and strong, and in another life, Arthur would be truly enjoying this. Since this was now definitively the only time this would be happening, he was going to have to live vicariously through Hope and this one moment.

Eames was watching her with eyes that were very bright, a familiar light in them, and Arthur had to suppress the urge to punch the man in the face. It was one thing to know that Eames looked at other people like that. (He looked at lots of people like that, Arthur had met the man.) It was something else again to be on the receiving end of the look when he _was_ one of those other people.

It was not a very pleasant feeling.

“It’s a little disconcerting to find you so attractive,” Eames murmured.

Arthur allowed Hope’s brow to furrow into a little frown. “Why would you say that?”

“This isn’t the sort of place where I’d expect to find someone like you. I didn’t think Collins had that much imagination.”

Projections weren’t human. You could interact with them to a degree, but they mostly remained in the periphery of the dream for everyone who wasn’t the subject—unless you pissed them off enough that they attacked you. Rather like how everything made sense in a dream, however, if you chose to engage with them and said things that didn’t make sense in reality, they had a tendency to get a bit confused or gloss over it just as though you hadn’t said it.

Eames's initial comment had definitely caught her attention, though, and Arthur didn't think he could simply ignore it, now. As it turned out, though, he didn't really need to worry what Hope might have said next because Eames leaned in and covered Hope's lips with his own.

And no matter how many times Arthur had denied it when needled by Eames, he _had_ always been extremely curious. The man's lips were softer and gentler than Arthur had expected, though the kiss was as skilled as he had anticipated it would be. Eames nipped at Hope's bottom lip, and Arthur opened his mouth without thought and quietly and viciously hated himself in that moment.

He could say he'd been trying not to blow his cover, but that would be a lie.

Hope clutched at Eames, fingers curling into the fabric of his horrible shirt, and Eames's hands slid lower than altogether acceptable in polite society. Hope pulled away, and Eames allowed the movement.

His lips were impossibly pink, his breathing accelerated, and the look in his eyes made Arthur want to forget everything for just a minute or two and let the other man do everything he was currently thinking.

That, however, was not an option, and Arthur reined himself in sharply. Hope bit her lip and eyed Eames with wide eyes.

"I need two minutes in the little girls' room, and then I want you to take me somewhere more private."

Eames grinned. "That's a promise, love. Two minutes?"

"Two minutes," Hope agreed coyly, backing away and letting go of the other man with a show of reluctance before she turned around and strutted to the bathroom, feeling Eames's burning gaze on her ass.

Arthur nearly punched a hole in the wall when he got inside. He'd come to fucking _rescue_ Eames, he'd never imagined any of this, and it was all so _horrible_. He was working himself up into something resembling a righteous rage, and it was difficult to subdue it in the need to be rational and not fucking insane.

There was a lot at stake here, however, and there had at least been no real contest about what had to happen now.

Hope locked herself in a stall, just in case, but a little over a minute after she entered the bathroom, the world dissolved, and Arthur opened his eyes in the warehouse.

Even as part of him once again considered the two men lying beside him, the perfect opportunity to shoot them, he was removing his needle, coiling the spare IV, and making sure everything looked just as it had when he arrived.

He scooped the dead projection into his arms, vanished the bloodstain with a minor alteration, and became Hope long enough to launch himself up to those impossibly far away windows.

If he'd thought longer about it, he would probably not have been able to manage getting through the window, change them back to unhinged, get the dead projection out through the window and climb back onto the roof looking like Arthur, but he didn't really have time to think about it.

Ariadne was running over by the time he'd pulled himself onto the top of the roof, internally swearing up a storm from the gunshot wound on his arm that he'd mostly forgotten about in the other level.

"Are you all right?" she was eyeing the dead projection and him with worried eyes.

"We have very little time, and I can't explain right now," he told her urgently. "It's crucial that Eames and Collins don't realise I was down in the second level since they didn't see me down there. So in thirty seconds, I need you to unleash the war to end all wars on the projections below and blast the hell out of those doors so that they don't realise someone was in there."

"What are you going to do?"

"Be somewhere else."

She was frowning fiercely, still eyeing him with concern, and he didn't know if it was because of this new plan or if he'd betrayed himself in some other way. It really didn't matter right now.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked.

"There was a sedative in the line. We'll be all right for the kick in three minutes. Trust no one. Can you do this for me?"

She stared at him for another long moment and then gave an abrupt nod. Arthur wasn't sure if it was the warning phrase or the fact that he was telling her the plan involved her staying here for three minutes in the middle of a war zone when she could wind up in limbo that had proved to her that he was in deadly earnest, but he would take it.

"Go!" he admonished, and she was running back to the corner of the building and pulling the pin out of the grenade with her teeth as she readied what looked a lot like Eames’s grenade launcher from the Fischer job.

Arthur spared a glance to make sure she wasn't looking his way, and then he leapt off the building, shifting into Hope and letting her wings unfurl behind him. He stayed low to the ground long enough to ensure that he was out of all lines of sight where he was close enough to be recognizable, and then he soared higher, getting a birds' eye view of the city.

Collins wasn't just planning to ransack Arthur's mind. He hadn't simply been planning to attack Arthur's friends. On top of all that, the man had staged this entire mission and treated Arthur like he was an idiot.

Arthur really hated that, and if he wasn't able to shoot the man in the head, he damn well intended to prove that Collins wasn't worth the ground that _Nash_ walked on, the asshole, never mind anyone who made up their _actual_ team.

Collins was apparently capable of a modicum of cunning or this wouldn’t have worked at all, but he really wasn’t very subtle overall. Arthur’s intel had indicated that the mark was afraid of heights, a fact which they had intended to use to their advantage, but it meant that they’d been supposed to look for him at ground level. Since the Extractor would want the man to be exactly where they _wouldn’t_ look for him under these circumstances, Arthur found the stupidest, most ostentatiously tall building and headed into the penthouse by way of the window, changing back into Arthur so that when the Mark saw him, he was impeccably dressed—and inexplicably present.

“Well done, Mr. Forthwright,” Arthur said smoothly. “Mr. Collins is quite impressed.”

The Mark relaxed immediately, and Arthur suppressed an eye roll. Seriously? As easy as that?

He stepped closer, noticing the way the man stayed away from the windows and sight of the impressive view. He handed the man a drink and explained, “Your militarised subconscious elements are pinning down the extraction team as we speak. Collins wishes to reconfirm the integrity of your mind and brainstorm some additional security. Perhaps we could go downstairs to the vault?”

The man was just itching for an excuse to get off the top floor, and Arthur’s no-nonsense tone served him well.

The sedative took effect shortly after they entered the vault, and Arthur committed the necessary information to memory before it faded off the page in the face of the unconscious Mark and the kick pulled him out of the dream.

Arthur had weighed all his options and settled on a gun trained on Collins, who raised an eyebrow. He was a better actor than Arthur would have expected, or he truly thought his secret was safe.

“What’s going on?” It was Ariadne who asked.

Arthur didn't look away from Collins. “You militarised the Mark against us.”

A casual shrug. “Call it an audition.”

“That's unprofessional enough to make me not regret shooting you right now. Eames or Ariadne could have been badly injured."

"Are you Superman, then?"

Enough condescension to choke a horse.

"Eames got dragged away by subcons. Ariadne shot her way through them to try to rescue him. I went after the Mark."

"Then you know why the Extraction failed."

"You mean you know why your training failed."

They all sort of blinked at him, and Arthur spared a moment to be quietly very offended.

"Off shore account numbers and a couple of interesting blackmail schemes." Arthur smiled at the other man, who looked mildly disconcerted for the first time since this had started. "But I'm sure you knew that already." He holstered his gun. "Now, if you'll excuse me, the words 'never again' best express my desire to work with you."

It was remarkably silent as Arthur gathered up his few belongings and left the building. Had his world not just come crashing down around his ears, he'd feel a nice surge of triumph at the moment.

He hadn't made it very far down the block before Eames and Ariadne hurried to join him.

"Darling," Eames said, and he sounded genuinely impressed, "that was a tour de force."

If Arthur could trust the man further than he could throw him, this would affect him in some way.

He scoffed. "Please. The man is an asshole."

Eames laughed. "True. That makes it all the nicer to see someone hand him his arse—which it is _entirely_ likely he couldn't find with two hands and a flashlight."

Ariadne snorted, and Arthur was pleased it was in character to shoot her a glare for encouraging the other man.

Arthur continued seriously, "Putting the team at risk for his own agenda is completely unacceptable."

Eames cleared his throat loudly. "I hate to break this to you, but it's hardly a new experience for you."

Arthur stiffened. "Do you have a particular desire to be shot between the eyes?"

"I'm just saying—" Eames said defensively.

"That was completely different," Arthur said flatly. "This was an ambush."

"Um, I don't want to get in the middle…." Ariadne began.

Arthur let out a short huff of breath, feeling his temper fray dangerously.

"Let's agree to disagree, okay? I'm not in the mood for a fight."

Or, to be more accurate, he was just itching for one, but he wasn't quite ready for the consequences.

"You always did give him more latitude than you gave anyone else," Eames pointed out in the tone that said that this was his version of "letting it go"—in other words, ensuring that he needled Arthur and hoping that Arthur would bring up the topic he had just resolved to let go.

There was no way that Arthur could point out all the ways that the two cases were completely disparate, and he didn't really want to argue the matter in any case. Mal was dead, and Dom and James and Phillipa had been reunited, and that was all that mattered. They _were_ selfish and personal goals when it came right down to it, but the _right_ sort of selfish and personal goals.

Collins deserved a bullet between the eyes.

"Ariadne," Arthur said very deliberately, "your plane takes off this evening, right?"

"Right," she agreed, a little more slowly than was altogether convincing, but it was going to be pretty obvious that Arthur was chivvying her along regardless.

With a little bit of luck, Eames would simply misunderstand the reasons why.

"There's no way _you_ 're leaving before I get a celebratory drink into you," Eames said, slinging a friendly arm over Arthur's shoulder.

Arthur slipped out of the other man's grasp with a long-suffering sigh, ignoring the way his stomach clenched and his sense memory went into overdrive reminding him of the most recent occasion where they had been that close.

"Unfortunately, my flight isn't until tomorrow morning," Arthur lied.

He needed to get Ariadne safely out of here before he did his own disappearing act. He didn't want anyone to get desperate at this stage in the game.

Eames positively grinned. "Excellent. Drinks it is."

Arthur looked at Ariadne with a very small portion of the desperation that he was feeling.

"Do you need help packing?"

Ariadne laughed. "I think I can manage, thank you, even getting to the airport in a hurry."

At least she'd got that message.

"Text me to let me know you made it onto the flight on time."

She rolled her eyes and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. "Worrier."

"I'm the point man. It's my job," he said huffily.

She laughed. "As you say."

They reached the hotel.

"I'll leave you to your drink," she said cheerfully.

He mouthed the word "traitor" at her, but she just laughed and gave the two of them a jaunty wave as she headed to the elevator.

"Looks like it's just you and me, Darling."

Arthur wondered if the other man had _any_ idea how exponentially more likely this comment made it that he was going to wind up with a bullet in the brain.

"Come on," Eames said fearlessly, "I'll get you anything you like."

Arthur closed his eyes briefly and then opened them to regard the other man. "Has it occurred to you that I don't want you to buy me a drink?"

"Of course it has," Eames said with that same cheerfulness that made Arthur want to kick him in the teeth. "But I'm certain I'll be able to overcome that faux reticence."

There were so many reasons that Arthur could cheerfully have shot the other man in that moment. Eames was usually pretty good about picking up that sort of thing—but then, Arthur didn't suppose that it was anything new these days, and if he was currently hiding how truly homicidal he was feeling, then that was all to the good.

And he needed to give Ariadne time to get safely away.

He sighed and gestured towards the hotel bar.

"Lead on."

Eames beamed at him, and it didn't really do any good to claim that his stomach had flipped because he was _disappointed_.

(Really, Arthur needed to work on his ability to lie to himself. He'd probably sleep better at night.)

"After you." Eames gestured expansively.

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Afraid I'm going to make a break for it?"

Eames made a face but led the way. Arthur wasn't giving anyone his back right now—not to mention the fact that he knew that Eames ogled.

It was one thing when they were flirting and dancing around one another. It was altogether another thing when Eames was trying to seduce him for truly nefarious purposes.

They went the predicted rounds when Eames tried to get the drinks and Arthur insisted on being the one to go.

It was just too easy to slip something into someone's drink that way. There was at least a little slight of hand required when you were trying to do it in front of the other person—and Arthur was usually very good at catching that sort of thing.

"You look like the sort of person who forgets to mention you ordered doubles," Arthur pointed out.

"Can't handle your liquor?"

"Need help?"

Challenge issued. Arthur knew he was going to regret it—but he'd regretted the entire day almost since the moment it had started, and there were very few ways to truly make it worse.

Eames let him go, of course, and Arthur returned with the unaltered drinks. Clearly, he should start carrying pills with him again, but he'd gotten a little lax in the real world.

Eames toasted him, and Arthur was starting to feel a little sick again—and he hadn't even started drinking.

Part of him wished that he'd done some of this with Eames before so that he'd have an undiluted memory to keep him going after this one imploded.

The rest of him thought that it was all to the good that he didn't have anything to help drag him deeper than he'd already gone.

He allowed Eames to think that he was convincing Arthur to drink another drink, and they chatted about everything and nothing, branching out from this screwed up job and the ridiculous things that they had witnessed over the years, though Arthur noted that the other man was careful not to bring up Dom now; it would hardly serve his purpose if Arthur leapt up and left in a huff.

Two drinks became four even interspersed with water as Arthur had insisted, and this made it all the more plausible when he followed the other man up to his hotel room.

Eames's lips had sealed over Arthur's before his back hit the door as it slammed closed.

He tasted like the whisky he'd been drinking, not quite as appealing as he had been in the dream, but still warm and very demanding, far more demanding than he had been when Arthur had appeared as Hope.

They were the right height now, and Eames was pinning Arthur against the door with his body, all hard muscles and burning heat.

Arthur hated the fact that Eames had kissed Hope first, hated the way his body responded to the other man, the way he arched into the other man's touch, clutched at his shirt with needy fingers and _wanted_ so much he ached.

He curled his other hand into the other man’s hair, cradling the base of his skull and relishing the way Eames leaned closer to him.

The moments he got here were going to be the only moments that he ever got, and the knowledge of what was really going on had already tainted it beyond repair.

He should at least have had the self-control to like it less.

But there was the faint scratch of stubble against his cheek, all that heat, and clever hands that were already pulling Arthur out of his suit jacket.

This was going too fast and yet not fast enough because any moment now—

Eames let out a low growl of protest when Arthur pulled away to root through the pile of clothes at his feet—when had he even lost his tie?—to pull out his phone.

_Hope you kiss better in real life._

He allowed his lips to tip up in the slightest of smiles at his relief that Ariadne was safe.

Then he turned back to Eames, and he stopped pretending to be slightly drunk.

Worry edged out the lust on the other man's face.

"Is everything all right?"

"I have to go."

Eames's gaze sharpened, assessing, and Arthur couldn't help but note bitterly that he seemed a lot less drunk than he had moments ago, too. Not wanting to end up betrayed and dead was pretty explicable; what was _Eames_ 's excuse for the subterfuge?

"Arthur, what's wrong?"

Arthur jerked back, not nearly as suavely as he would have liked, out of the way of the other man's touch.

He liked it too much, had liked it too much even when he knew its cost, and he couldn't allow himself to be that weak again.

He grabbed up his tie and his suit jacket, smoothly rebuttoning his shirt.

"Goodbye, Mr. Eames," Arthur pronounced politely and altogether as coldly as he could manage, and Eames just gaped at him as he closed the door in the other man's face.

He was safely around the corner before he heard the other man calling his name, and he knew that Eames would never find him after that; Arthur was the point man, and he had chosen this hotel after carefully assessing its floor plans.

He hadn't put himself and Eames on the same floor, nor had he given the other man his room number. There was nothing he couldn't have lived without, but he preferred to leave a completely invisible trail where possible, and that meant clearing out the room.

He'd brought little, and since this was an extraction with a new team, he'd been ready to leave on even more of a moment's notice than usual.

He felt mildly regretful about reporting someone of Eames's description causing mischief to the hotel staff and the police, but he reminded himself of just what it was that Eames had been paid off to do. It was _stupid_ to be feeling any sort of loyalty to the other man under the circumstances—and it wasn't as though Eames wasn't going to be able to talk his way out of it. He was good at that.

Fewer than three minutes, and Arthur was out of the hotel. Under ten and phone, PASIV, and recognizable IDs had been destroyed.

He eschewed flying entirely—far too predictable—and went with public transportation and then a bus with a cash payment. He wondered if he was the only member of the team—not that he had a team anymore, he reminded himself viciously—who knew from firsthand experience that there were some excellent places in Buffalo to swim across the border.

No one ever thought to look for people flying out of Canada—not that they would know what to look for anyway, since Arthur had a whole slew of forged passports and IDs that he never used with any team.

They were on hand for when he needed to disappear completely, and while that hadn't happened recently, there was a reason that Arthur was always prepared.

Contacts, a buzz cut and dye job, a change of clothes, a cheerful demeanour and a bright smile, and most people wouldn't recognize him even if he was leaving from somewhere that they actually expected.

Arthur had always been good at running, and he'd had a long time to set up a very good network.

He'd sort of hoped that he wouldn't have to use it, but that had clearly been wishful thinking on his part.

Arthur disappeared.


	2. Interlude

_~ INTERLUDE ~_

When Ariadne returned to her little Paris flat one evening and found Arthur in her living room, she let out a shriek of surprise that she would deny to her dying day and flung herself at the other man.

She hugged him desperately for a moment, squeezing him as tight as she could, and then she was hauling him to his feet and dragging him towards the door even as she gushed.

"Oh, my god, we thought you were dead. There isn't much time."

"What is it? What's happened?" he asked sharply. "Dom? The kids?"

She shook her head. "It's Eames. He's in a coma."

She was jerked to a stop by Arthur's cessation of motion, and she turned back to see that he was looking at her with an expression on his face that she had never seen before. It was too complicated for her to identify, but she could tell enough to know that it was not any of the expressions that she had anticipated that that news would garner.

"Come _on_ ," she said sharply, tugging at his arm again. "They have no idea why he's held on as long as he has, but Collins has already died, and—"

"What?"

The word snapped through the air with the force of an expertly wielded whip.

She nodded, getting that he'd want news but not understanding why they couldn't play catch-up while they were _moving_.

"Eames searched for you everywhere, got Cobb and Saito and even Yusef involved, and when they couldn't find you, he assumed that Collins had eliminated you, some stupid plot, apparently, which Eames had tried to thwart by claiming that he was going to spy on you for Collins—like anyone would buy _that_." She huffed and incredulous laugh. "He went after Collins, and no one knows exactly what happened, but now Collins is dead and Eames in a coma, and it's been almost eight weeks now, and—"

Ariadne cut off abruptly, startled by their sudden motion, since Arthur was now yanking the two of them out of her flat, clattering down the stairs, and spilling the two of them onto the sidewalk with no regard for passers-by.

"Where are we going?" he demanded tersely.

She directed him to the clinic, and it wasn't until they were in the cab that he demanded, "Why there?"

"Saito had him moved for us, and since Cobb couldn't spare as much time, I'm keeping an eye on him."

"Symptoms?"

She looked at him worriedly. He was paler than he had been, and now wired so tensely that she was a little worried that he was going to explode.

He hadn't looked at her when he asked the question, and he shot her a swift, piercing glare now that made her sit up straighter.

She cleared her throat. "Nothing out of the ordinary, I guess. The PASIV had run dry by the time they were found, and Collins was dead. Eames has been non-responsive to all external stimuli since that time, but Yusuf has got him back on a machine with his smoothest, most long-lasting formula to try to give him as much time as possible."

"How is his physical state? Pneumonia? Infection? Fever? Malnutrition?"

She blinked at the rapid fire questions. She hadn't known any of those were a danger until the nurse had explained it to her when she was visiting Eames so frequently.

Of course, she didn't know why it really came as a surprise, since there didn't seem to be a topic that Arthur wasn't well-versed in.

"They've managed to fight off all infections so far, but while no one is actually saying so to me, anyway, I think they're starting to lose hope. Officially, I don't think anyone even knows why he's under. We can only assume that he wound up in limbo—but we don't know why Collins is dead and Eames is still hanging in. There's no indication of why that is or how long it's going to last, but I think everyone is assuming that his days are numbered, and it's getting kind of … depressing."

"It usually does," Arthur muttered.

Ariadne wasn't certain that she was supposed to have heard, and she was definitely left with the feeling that there was a lot more going on than she realised.

Of course, when was that not the case?

They arrived at the private clinic where Saito had put Eames, slipping passed the door man who recognized her and never showed surprise when she was with someone. Saito had not come himself, and Yusef had confessed that he couldn't stand it, so she had not asked him to come back. Dom had only been able to visit a couple of times, still trying to spend as much time with his kids as possible.

She totally understood, and she didn't blame him at all, but it had been a little rough on her—though she had always denied it when anyone asked—especially once she had realised that Arthur had been trying to get her safely out of there after the Forthwright job.

She couldn't help but feel guilty, a guilt that had compounded when Eames had been found comatose, only now here Arthur was, alive and well, and none of this was making any sense.

"What happened to you?"

She hadn't altogether meant to ask the question. She knew what a private person he was, but she had thought that he was dead for almost six months, everyone who had supported her in this life effectively removed or remote, one way or the other.

It had not been a pleasant feeling.

Arthur drew a deep breath and let it out through his nose. It looked as though he was maybe actually going to answer her, though the answer didn't seem to be pleasant, only then they had arrived at Eames's private room, and all chance of getting an answer out of the other man was gone the moment that Arthur saw Eames.

Her breath caught at the rawness of it. It was the same way that she had seen Dom look at Mal, and it broke her heart.

"Oh, Eames."

It was barely a breath of sound, and Ariadne was altogether certain that Arthur had forgotten that she was even by his side as he moved further into the room as though drawn by a magnet.

She closed the door to give them a little privacy and then tried to think about what Arthur was seeing. This was the first time that he had seen Eames since the Forthwright job. She closed her eyes and thought of the first time she had seen Eames, in all his brash and bigger-than-life glory for the Fischer job.

She opened her eyes and barely suppressed a gasp. She'd known that Eames wasn't well; anyone who was in a coma was clearly not healthy, but she'd seen him every day for months now, and the changes had therefore been gradual enough that she hadn't completely put it together. But with Arthur's so obvious reaction now, it was brought home to her just how pale Eames was, no trace of his Mombassa tan on his cheeks anymore. His stillness was especially marked for a man normally so energetic, and he had lost a good thirty pounds—in the too fast, not exercising sort of way that made him look malnourished rather than trim or fit. There were dark smudges under his eyes, and he just … he looked awful.

Arthur had laid one hand on the man's forehead and reached out to wrap his fingers around the other man's. Ariadne was quite certain that she had never seen such a tender gesture towards Eames from the other man before. Actually, possibly towards anyone.

She was contemplating whether she should make herself scarce because she really felt as though she was intruding when Arthur was suddenly heading for the door.

"I'll be back."

He was gone before she could question him, and she felt a bit as though she had been left in the wake of a hurricane.

Sinking into the chair next to Eames's bed, she pulled her totem out of her pocket and balanced it on the armrest. It tipped over towards the side with precisely the sound and weight it was supposed to, telling her that this _was_ reality and she wasn't going insane.

She still wasn't altogether certain. She didn't think that Arthur was dealing with this very well, and she wasn't sure he was going to be coming back anytime soon—or maybe it was going to turn out that she had invented the entire thing, and he had never been here. That seemed distinctly possible.

She’d only just begun to seriously wonder if she should be phoning Dom or Saito or Yusuf to report that she’d lost her grip on reality when Arthur was suddenly back.

When she realised where he was heading, she leapt to her feet.

“You can’t!” she yelped.

He shot her a look and just kept working. She’d never seen someone splice a line into a PASIV before, and she was momentarily distracted.

“No, really,” she insisted when she managed to tear herself away from the mesmerising sight of his calm efficiency. “You can’t. That’s why he’s hooked up to a single like that. Someone who’s in a coma is in limbo, and it’s not even normal limbo.”

She’d heard enough horror stories when the others had been explaining to her why no one could go looking for the other man.

“I know.”

The words were quiet and definite and … absolute. It was someone who had the knowledge and was choosing to make the stupid choice anyway. She wanted to object again, wanted to call Dom and tell him to get here _now_ , but he couldn’t, and she didn’t.

This was Dom choosing to stay in limbo with Mal all over again, and it really didn’t matter what anyone else said.

This didn’t mean she could keep totally silent, though.

“I don’t want this to become a room for two, Arthur.”

He actually looked at her for a moment, though there was still that distance in her eyes that told her that he was already gone.

“I’ll get him out. I promise.”

And what was there to say to that? He couldn’t possibly guarantee something like that, but he’d gone and done it anyway, done it with that certainty that he brought to everything dream-related.

He’d shown her Penrose stairs as though they made the most sense in the world. He’d synchronised their second kick stuck alone on a second dream level in zero-g.

And he looked at Eames with his heart in his eyes.

If anyone could do this, he could.

So she let him pull up a chair, didn’t ask where he’d stolen the supplies from, and bit her tongue to prevent herself from asking him if he was sure about this. He had a disturbingly high chance of winding up in a coma or dead, and they both knew it.

He lay back in the chair, slipped the needle into a vein like the pro that he was, and smiled the smile meant to reassure before he looked back at Eames and then closed his eyes.

There was no kick here, no musical trigger. Arthur had to find Eames and get them both out, or they’d both be dead.


	3. Part Two

_Part Two_

It was another quiet day in the bookshop. But then, it was always a quiet day in the bookshop; this was the way that Harry preferred it. People were a nuisance and never quite right, something that he’d been feeling for some time, but most markedly since prison.

It was much easier for everyone if they didn’t interact too much.

Mind you, a certain amount of interaction was necessary for his business to stay afloat, but he found that he seemed to manage it somehow month after month even when there were moments where it seemed as though it wasn’t going to come together.

There were times where he hated his parents for leaving him the bookshop, a family obligation that he had not felt quite able to simply shrug off, but it was something to fill his days; when he’d actually sat down to think about it, there didn’t seem to be anything else that he’d _rather_ do.

The bell over the door jangled. Harry steadfastly ignored it, thinking that he should really go ahead with his resolution to remove the bell. How many people, realistically, were going to steal old books? Not enough to break him, anyway.

Most people left once they realised this wasn’t a shop that sold _Twilight_ or _Harry Potter_ or _Hunger Games_ —or whatever the most popular new series was these days.

Harry let the sound of someone browsing the shelves of his shop fade away from him, continuing his work at the counter. He’d used to work in the back, but then he’d be constantly annoyed by needing to go up to the cash to deal with customers. They were few enough and far enough in between that it made more sense to work at the counter and integrate the interruptions that way.

When he glanced up again, it was to find someone standing in front of him. Harry tried not to startle, focussing on what was in the man’s hand.

“Can’t you read? No food or drink in here, mate.”

The impeccably dressed man held out the coffee. “It’s for you.”

Harry frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Caramel latte.”

It seemed silly, on the one hand, to take the beverage that he had just criticised the other man for having in the shop when he thought that _he_ was drinking it, but how could Harry refuse a drink that might as well have been made for him?

He reached for the coffee, and the other man handed it over. Harry took a tentative sip and let out a sigh of pleasure. It even had the extra frothed milk and a sprinkling of cinnamon that Harry preferred. He took another long swallow, feeling the warmth swirl down his throat and pool in his stomach.

He looked up at the man who’d brought the coffee with his natty suit and dark, intense eyes.

“Stalker, then?” he asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“Not likely to know the cinnamon _and_ the milk on a random chance.”

The other man’s lips tipped up a bit. “Must have known you in another life.”

“You don’t strike me as a Buddhist.”

“You don’t know me very well.”

“True.”

Even as Harry was saying it, though, it felt a little off. _He_ didn’t believe in reincarnation, but there was _something_ there. He pushed the niggling thought away but found himself, to his surprise, pursuing the conversation.

“So what brings you to the bookshop?”

“I’m looking for something I like.”

“Oh? What are your interests?”

“Varied.”

Harry found his lips curling up into a genuine smile in spite of himself. It had been a while since anyone had flirted so determinedly with him. The man hadn't looked away from Harry since he'd started talking to him, and Harry couldn't remember enjoying himself quite this much in quite some time.

"How did you wind up minding a bookstore?" the other man pursued.

Harry sobered. This was how these conversations started, and they ended with what Harry said next.

"My parents left it to me. I started managing it when I got out of prison."

The other man didn't bat an eyelash. "Nice to have something lined up for when you get out. Much easier to get sucked back onto the wrong side of the law otherwise."

There was a strange feeling in the pit of Harry's stomach, but he didn't let himself hope, made himself keep confessing.

"I'm not really interested in becoming a serial killer."

There. He'd said it. The other man could remember whatever convenient excuse would get him out of the building, and Harry would go back to being bored but safe.

Utterly improbably, the other man's lips tipped up.

"That's good to know."

"You don't mind?" Harry asked uncertainly.

"How could I possibly mind? Just think of all the people I _don't_ know that about. You've cleared it up right off the bat."

"I _killed_ a man," Harry stated baldly, worried that he'd been too subtle before.

"A bad man?"

"Well, yes," Harry admitted, confused.

"And you don't intend to become a serial killer."

"No," Harry agreed.

"So we’ve resolved that."

He sounded _so_ sure, and Harry felt warmed by something altogether more pleasant than the coffee, though he told himself that it was silly to be so affected by someone he didn't know.

Impulsively, he held out his hand. "I'm Harry."

The other man shook, his grip firm and warm.

"Arthur."

Arthur was watching him carefully now, and Harry smiled and retrieved his hand.

"It's nice to meet you, Arthur. Most people have run screaming from the shop by now."

"I'm not most people."

"So I'm gathering. Do you read?"

This surprised a laugh out of Arthur. "Period? Learned around the age of four."

Harry grinned and stressed with amusement, " _Currently_. Are you interested in something in the shop?"

"Apart from the obvious?"

Harry felt his grin widen impossibly large. He hadn't felt this good since before prison.

"Apart from the obvious," he agreed.

"I read for amusement when time permits and something really piques my interest, but I do a lot of research for my job, which tends to stray rather radically from the 9-5."

"Oh?"

"Intel-gathering for a think tank. Sometimes you need to know everything there is to know about socks. At 3am. Go figure."

Harry laughed again. "Socks. Really?"

Arthur winked. "Well, maybe not socks, but you get the idea."

Harry was beginning to.

"Return custom if you're sufficiently diverted, then?"

Arthur hummed an agreement, though he was pretty sure neither of them was really talking about books.

Harry nevertheless set down his coffee and headed out to his shelves. He didn't think he could possibly be misreading this given how obvious the other man was being, but it had been a while, and this was a nicely transparent excuse.

He roamed the shelves, letting his fingers run along the spines, waiting to be inspired. The other man had done such a good job of guessing about Harry, he wanted to try to return the favour.

Arthur watched him quietly, making no move to interfere or speed him along.

Harry pondered. Although the perfect suit and the slicked back hair suggested that he'd enjoy something pretty classic, the day job made Harry hesitate. If it was too dry or too straightforward, that mightn't be of enough interest to the other man. But neither did Harry want to pick something that was _so_ out there that Arthur wouldn't even try it.

His hands plucked the book off the shelf without his even being conscious of the decision being made. Arthur came over to see what he'd chosen before Harry could seriously consider just shoving it back on the shelf.

"An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul; Wherein the Immateriality of the Soul Is evinced from the Principles of Reason and Philosophy. Second edition. 1737," he read over Harry's shoulder. "The second volume is almost entirely about dreaming. How did you know?"

It was only as Harry relaxed that he realised how tense he'd been as he waited for a verdict.

"Maybe I knew you in another life, too?"

Arthur took the book, and Harry's fingers tingled where their skin had touched.

Harry told himself that it had clearly simply been too long since he'd gotten laid.

He refused to take any money for the book, even when Arthur teased him about how ineffective a business practice that was.

Arthur promised to bring the book back if it was, in effect, a loan, and since Harry would have been happy to make it a gift but really wanted the man to come back, he accepted.

Almost before Harry knew what had happened, Arthur became a regular. He invariably showed up with coffee—most usually for Harry, but occasionally for himself as well—and Harry's day didn't feel complete unless he'd seen the other man.

They talked about everything, continued the impromptu lending library, and laughed a lot more than Harry would ever have imagined. Arthur's suits gradually disappeared, replaced with slacks and button-downs, occasionally a pullover, and even jeans a time or two.

On one memorable occasion, an unexpected torrential downpour outside had meant the other man's hair going all to curl and frizz with the gel washed away, and Harry had run both hands through the curly mass and laughed with delight. Arthur had tried to hide how pleased he was.

Eames read the other man bits of his poetry, which Arthur criticised scathingly but with good humour, and somehow, Eames didn't mind. Arthur brought his guitar sometimes, and though he tended to "fiddle" more than play straight through, it was clear that he was quite good.

Arthur confessed that he'd never understood cricket and couldn't throw darts, and Eames tried to explain it to him until they finally had to agree that Arthur was not capable of learning either skill.

Eames discovered more books on dreaming and research methodologies than he had realised he’d had tucked away on his shelves, enough, he hoped to keep Arthur interested forever.

Sometimes, though, Harry caught Arthur looking at him with an expression that he couldn't quite identify, one that made him worry that Arthur was getting bored, that one day he just wasn't going to come back.

Harry began to think that he needed to come up with a better way to secure the other man's interest. This _really_ wasn’t a hardship, as it was something he’d been thinking about practically from the moment he met the man.

His attempt to kiss Arthur for the first time was an unmitigated disaster. Arthur sucked in a sharp breath and turned his head away, preventing the contact.

Harry recoiled, mortified.

"I'm sorry."

Arthur laid a hand on his arm, grasping hard enough so that Harry couldn't keep pulling away.

"Please don't apologise."

"I didn't mean—I thought—" Harry stammered out.

"Don't apologize," Arthur ordered more firmly. "Horribly cliché as it is, it's not you, it's me. You thought right, and I just can't…. It's just not something I can do right now, all right?"

Harry nodded, relieved that he maybe hadn't ruined everything after all, but still feeling deeply unsettled.

When Arthur didn’t show up the next day, Harry felt altogether dreadful. It seemed clear now that the other man had simply been letting him down gently, and now he'd run for the hills.

Harry was reminded of why he didn't do relationships, was reminded sharply of all the dangers.

He had never felt more lonely.

When a dull and otherwise completely dreary Monday morning two weeks later was interrupted by Arthur’s arrival with a _ridiculously_ large coffee, the relief Harry felt was absolute, all his intentions to remain distant should they ever see one another again vaporised as though they'd never existed.

"My turn to apologise," Arthur said, pushing the coffee across the counter to the other man as he stood there once more in his perfect suit that made Harry want to do nothing more than peel him out of it.

But he wasn't supposed to be thinking those thoughts anymore.

"I shouldn't have—" Harry tried again.

Arthur covered Harry's hands with his own. "What? Assumed that all my blatant flirting was going somewhere? Of course you should have. You picked up all the right signals."

"It's just not something you can do right now," Harry repeated the other man's words.

Arthur nodded, looking both relieved and distressed. "Forgive me?"

"Of course," Harry agreed easily, squeezing the other man's hands.

Though he'd prefer to have both, he'd take the man's company over a physical relationship.

Arthur looked down at their joined hands and then his eyebrows rose.

"Are you forging that book?"

Harry snatched his hands back, scrambling for everything laid across the counter. _Shit_. All this time, and he'd managed to keep that from the other man, only he'd begun to think that the other man wasn't ever going to come back, and he had been beyond bored.

Normally, he'd rattle off some sort of excuse, but it was like they had all dried up in his throat, and he couldn't seem to get any words out there.

Arthur laughed. "But you can't spell."

Harry stared at him, incredulous. Arthur had just found out that Harry was forging some of his expensive first editions, and his only comment was that Harry _couldn't spell_?

He stared at the man closely, but Arthur's eyes were dancing with laughter, no hint of dismay or disapproval in them.

Harry cleared his throat. "Don't have to spell to copy, do I?"

Arthur let the laughter out now. "True."

"To be honest," Harry admitted, "it's really just to keep from getting bored. It's not like I need the money."

"No desire to close the shop?"

"And do what?"

"Travel? Get a bigger house? A faster car?"

Harry shrugged. "Doesn't really appeal. Sounds lonely."

"Some people might say that running an old bookshop is lonely."

"Some people don't have coffee-bearing stalkers keeping them company all the time."

Arthur smiled at him, a smile of genuine pleasure, and Harry felt truly settled for the first time since he'd tried to kiss the other man.

"All right," Arthur said bracingly, clearly sensing how much Harry wanted to kiss him again and moving them along. "Show me the details of what you're working on, and let me know at what point I should be proofing it for you."

He seemed genuinely interested, and while it was technically making the other man an accessory, it was quite clear that Arthur had never intended to report it once he found out the truth, and it wasn't as though Harry was really intending to sell it.

Harry liked not having secrets from the other man; if he could handle the murder, it seemed silly to be squeamish about the forging.

Harry found himself thinking a lot about the kiss-that-was-not. He'd thought that he'd be able to easily put it out of his head. He'd meant what he'd thought before, that he'd rather have the man in his life in any way that he could get him, but it was like not staring at the pink elephant in the middle of the room. Every time Harry looked at Arthur, he wanted to kiss him. Arthur would grin at him with that special light in his eyes, and it would be everything Harry could do not to jump the man, not to lean over and _taste_ that smile.

But Arthur had been clear. He certainly hadn't missed Harry's interest, and if whatever prevented him from reciprocating suddenly disappeared, he had to assume that the other man was going to let him know. Checking periodically to ensure that the other man knew that he was still interested sounded like the sort of thing that verged on harassment.

So Harry did his best to be a good friend, and Arthur dutifully helped with the forging, catching some of Harry's mistakes before he could make them—which seemed improbable, but the man had an uncanny grasp of Harry's spelling and grammar so could often predict problem areas.

Harry had more fun forging with the other man for the company and the giggles—as he tried to slip errors and jokes in to see if Arthur would catch them—than the actual forging.

He wasted time and money in untold quantities and couldn't have been happier.

The morning that Arthur came in with an expression more serious than Harry had ever seen rather than a coffee, Harry felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

"What is it? What's the matter?" he demanded.

There was no way that he could feign nonchalance; he was too involved, and they both knew it.

"I'm not sure how much more time I have," Arthur said, eyes dark and stormy as they met Harry's. "I thought it would be better to go slow, but I'm not so sure anymore."

"You know I won't ever force you to do something you don't want to do," Harry pointed out, unable not to speak the words.

Arthur _had_ to know that much.

"Of course not," Arthur agreed with enough promptness that Harry felt better--at least until the other man continued. "It looks like I'm going to have to be the one to force you."

Harry frowned. "I don't understand."

They both knew that this was something that _Harry_ wanted—only the look that Arthur was giving him told him that he was missing the wide and sweeping something that had hovered at the periphery for too long.

"Why are there never any customers here?"

Harry frowned sharply, the question taking him completely by surprise and putting him on the defensive.

"I never said I was extremely successful, Darling."

He was an ex-con who'd killed someone and forged on the side when he got bored. If that wasn't what Arthur had signed up for, then he should have walked away a long time ago.

Arthur's eyes flickered closed for a moment and then open once more. There was something raw in his expression, something that hadn't been there before, but when he spoke, his voice was curiously mild.

"I'm not talking about a slow week or two. Tell me the last time there was a customer in the store."

Harry opened his mouth to respond, and that was when his brain caught up with his body and he realised that he … couldn't. It was nonsensical. _Of course_ there had been customers. There _had_ to have been customers, he just … couldn't think of a single one.

Arthur's expression had softened now.

"Since you met me?" he proposed gently.

"When you left me," Harry agreed without thought, swallowing when he realised what he'd admitted and hurrying on. "The couple weeks that you weren't here. I think there were a few customers then."

"But when you were occupied with me, there were no customers to get in the way."

Wonderingly, confused, Harry agreed, "Right."

"That's not normal," Arthur pointed out, as though Harry might not have grasped that fact.

"Right," Harry agreed again, because it _was_ weird, only there was part of him that was also trying to rationalise it, to pass it off as simply the dry spell that Arthur had already dismissed.

“Where are we?”

“In my bookshop,” Harry answered, beginning to get a little worried now.

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Where is your bookshop? What city?”

Harry blinked at him, mind a jumbled mass of confusion because part of him couldn’t believe that Arthur was asking a question that silly, and the other part of him was stumbling over an answer.

“Leicester.”

“Yet you’ve never asked me why I have an American accent.”

“I assume you came from America,” Harry said, beginning to get annoyed now.

“Did you?” Arthur asked with infuriating calm.

Of course he had. He—he hadn’t bothered to ask because it was obvious, right? Not because he’d simply known when there was no reason for him to have known.

He was starting to get a headache.

“You don’t like the cold, do you?”

Harry wasn’t even tracking the conversation now.

“Not really, no.”

“Has it ever been winter here?”

He opened his mouth to say yes but found his brain freezing again in a sudden inability to point out the obvious. It _must_ have been winter here, but he couldn’t actually think of an occasion. It always seemed to be … mild. Hot, sometimes, but … never cold?

“We have nice weather here.”

Even he could hear how hollow the excuse sounded, and Arthur didn’t bother to pursue it.

“What did you have for dinner last night?”

“I….”

But he couldn’t do it. He didn’t remember.

“When’s the last time you had stock delivered? Where did all the books on dreaming and research come from?”

He’d thought, hadn’t he, that there were a lot of them?

Arthur just kept going. “Where do you get groceries? When’s the last time you paid a bill? Your taxes? Rent?”

 _Regularly_ was all that sprang to mind, but he couldn’t seize upon a single actual incident. It was like the world was imploding in his head, the mother of all headaches growing behind his eyes.

“Why do you never ask me why I’m not working? Why I’m always here?”

“Because….”

“Because this is where you want me?”

“Yes.” Harry gasped out the word, feeling as though he’d been running a race—or maybe just being chased by something monstrous. “You said your hours were flexible. And I was happy with all the time you were spending with me. I didn’t care why. It’s … I … I wasn’t trying to pry.”

Arthur smiled a little, though the smile did not reach his eyes, which looked worried. He was too pale, and there was tension pinching his mouth in a way that Harry didn’t like.

“Which is very sweet but not very normal. You’re a pretty curious guy.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Harry said slowly, feeling as though he was trying to push through a thick fog.

The smile became a little more genuine, though there was still something fragile in those eyes. “Not that I’m advocating your hounding me or anything.”

“That would be normal.”

Arthur’s eyes flashed.

“I don’t know why I said that,” Harry said helplessly.

Arthur nodded a little, resolution hardening his face.

“Let’s try this again. How long have you been running the bookshop?”

“Since I got out of prison.”

“How long were you in prison?”

“Until I got paroled.”

Arthur sighed, and Harry realised that his answers were … rather imprecise and circular.

“The name of your parole officer? The last time you saw him or her?”

A vast nothing.

“Where were you in prison? How long was your trial?”

“My trial?” he said blankly.

“You were in prison for murdering someone. You must have had a trial.”

Harry froze. He couldn’t remember a trial _at all_. Some of the other things, they could maybe be passed off as being boring and forgettable. Everyone forgot what they ate the week before, right? Mixed up their days and their activities when they were monotonous? It happened.

But it was pretty impossible to claim that the trial had been inconsequential.

“I don’t remember,” he admitted.

It felt like his head was being split in two. He wanted to lash out, but Arthur had always been there for him.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“I’m tearing your world apart.”

Said so matter-of-factly, but Arthur’s hands were gripping Harry’s very cold ones, and there was still that look in the other man’s eyes that said that he was far more affected than he was letting on.

“Why?”

“Because it’s not real.”

Harry reeled back as though struck, ripping his hands away from the other man.

“What do you mean it’s not real?” he demanded, suddenly infuriated. “Are you mad? Is this some kind of a sick joke?”

“I’m not crazy, and this isn’t a joke." Arthur sounded desperately serious. "I was hoping that you’d start questioning more yourself so that I wouldn’t have to spring it on you like this, but that’s not working, and we’re running out of time.”

“What does that mean?”

Arthur drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re in a coma. Everything around you right now is a construct of your subconscious.”

Harry stared at him for a long, incredulous moment before he scoffed, “You’re telling me that I’m in, what, the world’s longest, most elaborate dream?”

Arthur’s expression was in deadly earnest, his voice flat. “I’m telling you you’re lost in limbo, and if you don’t get out soon, you’re going to die.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?” Arthur asked, just as though this were a rational conversation. “I’ve just pointed out numerous ways that this world doesn’t make sense.”

“Just because something is weird doesn’t make it invalid or _non-existent_ ,” Harry snapped.

“Not non-existent,” Arthur corrected. “Clearly, it’s here. It’s _a_ world. But it’s not the real world— it’s not what you think it is.”

“And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?” Harry asked dubiously.

He thought he saw a flash of hurt in the other man’s eyes, but it was quickly masked.

“I’ve been asking the questions so that you’ll use that brain of yours and take _your_ word for it.”

It was a little sharper than anything that Arthur had said previously, and Harry heard the insult clearly.

“So I’m stupid for not believing a random person for telling me that I’m dreaming and living a lie?”

“You’re _not_ stupid,” Arthur snapped, “and I’m _not_ a random person.”

“You’re a part of my consciousness, I suppose? Not real at all?”

“Certainly not!” Arthur exclaimed, sounding affronted. “I’m real, just like you are. I’ve come to get you.”

“A real _hero_ ,” Harry infused the word with mockery, “who entered my _coma_ to _rescue_ me.”

“I’m not a hero,” Arthur negated, still sounding somewhat offended. “But I am trying to save your life.”

“Why?” Harry asked, knowing there was something else here but not understanding what it was yet.

“Because I owe it to you,” Arthur said with finality. “But if I can’t convince you soon, I don’t know how much longer your body can hold on.”

“So, what, if I agree that this is a dream, the world goes poof and this real one you claim is out there appears?”

Arthur’s lips tightened, and it sounded as though he’d made his voice very carefully even when he said, “Not exactly. To get out of this world, you need to … leave it.”

Harry processed this, and then took a step away from the other man.

“I clearly should have asked if _you_ were a serial killer.”

“I’m not,” Arthur averred immediately, looking torn between rolling his eyes and being offended again.

Even under the circumstances—or perhaps because of them—Harry couldn’t help but find this funny. Somehow, it was hard to believe that a serial killer would roll his eyes so much, though maybe that was just Harry’s opinion.

He must have let some of his amusement show because Arthur’s expression softened, some of the tension going out of his shoulders.

“Wouldn’t matter if I was, though, because you’re the one who has to decide to leave.”

Harry blinked at him, hoped that he hadn’t come to the right conclusion. “You’re telling me I need to kill myself.”

“I’m telling you how you can return to reality,” Arthur said carefully.

Harry took that as a yes. Arthur made no move to come after him when he backed further away from the other man.

“Do you know how many people have told me I’m worthless? That I should just kill myself and save someone else the trouble?”

Arthur stepped forward, hand outstretched, but he stopped when Harry took another step away and let his hand fall to his side.

“No one who really knows you,” he answered, meeting Harry’s eyes and not looking away. “I came here to _save_ you, remember.”

Harry pushed away the past, concentrating on the present, though he wasn’t so sure that it wasn’t about to turn just as sour. “About that. You’re saying that everything that’s happened has been a set up? That you always knew me and just let this happen so you could convince me to kill myself?”

“I came bearing the kind of coffee you like,” Arthur pointed out, clearly trying to get another one of those “logical” assertions in that was supposed to convince Harry that he was living a lie. “I hoped that I would jog your memory and we wouldn’t have to have this awkward a conversation.”

“It _is_ a crappy conversation.”

Arthur huffed a laugh, and Harry felt a bit better, whether he should or not. He missed Arthur’s sense of humour and laughter, he realised, and that had put him on edge to begin with. It had only gotten worse from there.

“I’m sorry.” Arthur sounded genuinely regretful. “I’ve honestly enjoyed the time we’ve had here, but I think we’re pushing it as it is.”

“We were happy,” Harry couldn’t help but point out.

Unspoken but understood was the fact that Arthur had ruined that.

“But this isn’t reality,” Arthur stressed.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Why? If it feels real and looks real and we’re happy?” Harry asked a little bit desperately.

Though it was pretty clear that Arthur had never been happy like Harry had been. The thought niggled unpleasantly around the edges of Harry’s brain.

“Because you were sick of people because there were no real people around you. Because you were wasting away in a bookshop.”

“I thought you liked the bookshop,” Harry said, hurt.

Arthur sucked in breath sharply through his nose, and Harry knew the other man was trying to keep his temper.

“I like when you like it,” Arthur answered, leaving Harry rather muddled. “But that still doesn’t make it real, doesn’t mean that this world is populated by anything other than your mind.”

Harry knew that they were going to get into a philosophical debate if they argued whether that mattered or not, but Arthur kept going.

“You’re getting thinner.”

“I—What?”

This had not been where Harry thought the conversation was going at all.

“The longer I’ve been here, the thinner you’ve become.”

“I’m spending time with you instead of eating?”

Arthur gave a half laugh, but something altogether more serious lurked underneath.

“It means your sense of self is being undermined by the real world. And if your subconscious can’t keep up the illusion, you’re running out of time more and more quickly. Our bodies don’t stay comatose forever.”

“But if I kill myself here, I’ll wake up there. That’s what you’re claiming.”

“That’s how this works. And you _know_ that’s how this works.”

“How would I know?” Harry asked, surprised.

“Because that’s what we do. We work in dreams.”

“Come again?”

Arthur was starting to look frustrated again. “How can you have suppressed all of this _this_ much? There’s a piece of technology called a PASIV. It allows people to dream share, allows people to enter others’ dreams.”

“How is that a job?”

“We can extract information.”

Arthur had told Harry he worked for a think tank. Intel-gathering. Research. Everything was wrapping in on itself so tightly that he was worried it was going to suffocate him—only that was what Arthur was saying he needed to do anyway.

Something had to give.

“That’s crazy.”

Arthur grimaced. “I don’t know what else to say to you. I’ve pointed out all the ways this is illogical. You’ve admitted to not knowing things that you know you should, skipping from event to event just like you do in a dream. What else can I say to convince you?”

The direct question threw Harry. “Well, it’s not…. There isn’t anything you _can_ say,” he spluttered. “I mean, it’s not something that you can just take on faith, is it? Not when the only way to prove it is to kill yourself. You’re asking for a lot.”

“I know I am. But I have to try, right?”

He seemed desperate—but not in a serial killer/psycho sort of way, and Harry _wanted_ to reassure him, wanted to make him feel better. But he didn’t know how, not when everything was so screwed up.

If he _was_ telling the truth, then he was trying to do a very good thing. But how could Harry possibly _know_ that he was telling the truth?

“I want to believe you.”

He didn’t know where the words had come from, and Arthur’s eyes snapped to his.

“Do you?” he asked intensely.

Harry swallowed. “But I just … I _can’t_. It’s unbelievable. Why don’t I remember any of this real life?”

“I don’t really know. But I think you’re too smart for your own good, and this was the only way your brain could build a construct that you’d buy. You had to forget all about the PASIV and extracting.”

“And everyone you say I worked with? You?”

“Apparently. For the most part. But you found the books on dreaming. And you do things when you don’t think about it.”

“What sort of things?”

“Wear horrible shirts because you know I hate them.”

He looked down at the gaudy shirt that he was currently wearing. He hadn’t worn anything like that before Arthur came along, and he _did_ know that the other man didn’t like them.

His lips tipped up involuntarily, and he said halfway between a question and a statement, “I like to torture you with them.”

“You brought me cinnamon buns because they’re my favourite, even though I didn’t tell you here, rub at the perfect spot at the back of my neck that eases my tension headaches, never ask me why I wear a suit and tie to a bookshop.”

“You like your suit and tie,” he answered automatically.

“Yes, I do, and I know it’s something you can infer because I wear it, but did you infer it, or did you _know_ it?”

“I knew it,” Harry admitted absently before rallying. “But you stopped wearing the suits.”

Arthur looked away for a moment, then back at Harry. “This is limbo. People lose themselves here. It’s not always easy for me to remember why I’m here.”

“But the suits help you remember?”

Arthur nodded, looking as though he were contemplating saying more but stopping there.

This seemed a little odd to Harry, but on second thought, it was better not to question how Arthur felt about his suits.

“Why isn’t anything helping me remember?”

“Because this is the world you created, and this is the way you want it to be.”

“I created this world.”

“Yes.”

“Then why would I make it like this?” Harry demanded, suddenly angry again. “Why would I have killed someone? Why would I have gone to prison? Why would—“

He cut himself off abruptly.

Arthur looked at him suspiciously. “Why would _what_?”

“Nothing.”

“No, this is important,” Arthur corrected, staring at him intently. “This might be _most_ important. What don’t you want to tell me?”

Harry hadn’t ever told anyone, but no matter who or what Arthur was, it was clear that he wasn’t that.

“Perhaps you’d better see this world that you claim I created for myself.”

It was a short walk, and since Arthur didn’t point it out, Harry couldn’t help but notice that they went from the city to this secluded, nature-bound area very quickly. Still, though, there were green spaces in towns and cities, weren’t there? He was second-guessing everything now, and it was driving him mad.

He retraced the well-trod route easily. Flowers were blooming everywhere since it would be a waste to bring cut flowers all the time.

Beside him, Arthur sucked in a breath. “Oh, Eames.”

He’d _never_ called Harry that, and yet it resonated in a way that was altogether right—and therefore altogether unsettling.

Arthur knelt down by the gravestone and ran a finger along the smooth surface.

“Why did you go to prison?”

He wasn’t looking at Harry but down at the grave. Harry frowned.

“I killed a man. You already know—This isn’t him!” he yelped, horrified.

Arthur looked up at him fleetingly. “You killed a bad man. You don’t think this man is a bad man.”

He looked back down at the grave, finger now following the one word carefully incised on the marble surface.

Harry swallowed heavily. “He was a very good man.”

“And how did he die?”

The words stuck in his throat and came out sounding like sandpaper. “He was killed by a bad man.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Harry parroted.

“Yes, why. Why did Collins kill him?”

No one had even asked him _why_ before. “Because he was a traitorous bastard who was a miserable excuse for a human being, that’s why.”

“But there must have been a reason,” Arthur pressed. “Collins wasn’t a serial killer. It wasn’t a senseless act of violence. Why _this_ man?”

Harry felt a little bit as though he couldn’t catch his breath, as though he were rushing towards a precipice—and he wasn’t even moving.

“He had information Collins wanted.”

“What sort of information?”

“I don’t know!” Harry yelled, whirling away from the grave and Arthur’s calm, infuriating voice. “I don’t know, all right? He just…. Collins killed him, and I have to wake up every day, and he’s not here. And I go to sleep every night, and he’s still not here, and nothing’s going to change that. It doesn’t matter _why_.”

A hand on his arm, and for some reason, Harry didn’t feel like shaking it off. It felt like warmth was sinking back into him from that one connection, trying to thaw everything that had frozen—that had maybe been frozen for years.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur murmured when Harry turned back to him. “This isn’t … pleasant for me, either. I’m trying to help.”

“You have an odd way of showing it.”

“You’re very stubborn.”

“I was born that way, Darling.”

Arthur’s lips twitched up in a half smile. “I know you were. So let’s try this again. Whose grave is that?”

“Is your memory going? I just told you—“

“What happened, yes. But you didn’t give me a name. _Whose_ grave is that?”

Harry couldn’t explain why the bottom had suddenly dropped out of his stomach. He _knew_ it was a perfectly fair question, but his mind was rebelling.

“Come on,” Arthur prompted like a shark who was homing in on the bloody kill. “Give me a name. It’s not a hard question. If he means so much to you, he—“

“Arthur!” Harry snapped.

“Yes?”

“That’s his name,” Harry said, aggrieved. “His name was Arthur. He—“

 _Arthur_ was staring at him with eyes that saw too much.

Harry swore. “Please tell me that’s not why you told me that was your name.”

“You stubborn son of a bitch,” Arthur groaned. “Arthur _is_ my name. I’m trying to tell you that you got it wrong. I chose to make myself scarce before Collins could try anything—but you didn’t know that, and that’s how you wound up in this world with that gravestone.”

Harry’s brain short-circuited.

“You’re saying that you’re _my_ Arthur? I mean, _that_ Arthur?” He pointed at the grave.

Arthur nodded, looking pained.

“And my brain has just … what? Separated the two of you to screw with my head?”

"You wound up in the coma thinking that I was dead, thinking that Collins had killed me. Your subconscious had no way of knowing that the real me was going to show up, and it had already stripped out everything to do with dreaming, so it just … kept doing that."

Harry hated how much this … almost made sense. The other man could almost bring him there, and then Harry baulked and panicked because it was still the craziest thing he'd ever heard and none of it could be proved.

"But if I've divided it all up subconsciously, how can I ever _know_? Because I don't remember the life that you're trying to tell me about, and you don't know the life that I supposedly made up. The only way I can get to the life you say is real is to kill myself here, and you say that staying here is killing me anyway."

"Would you hit me if I said 'take a gamble'?" Arthur asked.

"I'd have to at least seriously consider it. This is my life we're talking about."

"I know," Arthur admitted softly.

Because if Arthur was telling the truth, he'd been here fighting for Harry's life all this time. And while people did stupid, elaborate, malicious things when the mood struck them, Harry was having a hard time truly conceiving why anyone would go to _this_ elaborate an effort. There were better ways to get him to kill himself, surely. Arthur could have done it and made it look like suicide a hundred times over with how much time they spent together. And if it _was_ true—

"You're saying that there's a life out there where he's still alive."

He gestured at the grave because he was still having trouble reconciling that Arthur and this Arthur, trying to meld together two people who were so distinct in Harry's mind. And yet he'd been so happy when this Arthur had come into his life, happy in a way that he hadn't been since—

"No!"

He looked at Arthur, confused.

"Well, yes," he corrected a moment later, "but you can’t—" He sounded more frantic than Harry was used to, muddling his words because he was reacting instead of thinking before he spoke. "If you decide to return to the real world, you need to go for you, not for something else, not because anyone told you to. You need to remember."

"And that's why we're here," Harry verbalised finally. "Because you're doing everything you can to convince me, to make me truly believe, and it's not working."

Arthur nodded.

Because Arthur could have promised him everything he ever wanted, could have told him that _anything_ was out there in reality, but he had refused to do it. He wanted Harry to come of his own accord because he _believed_.

But how did you believe in something as crazy as that, in something that Harry could never see with these eyes by definition because if what Arthur was saying was true, then his eyes weren't even real. Everything around him was a construct.

"If this is really a dream," Harry said suddenly, "can't you, I don't know, make it act like a dream? Everything you've said so far is sort of … circumstantial, you know, and usually stuff that happened in the past. Can't you do something now? Manipulate the world?"

"This is limbo," Arthur corrected. "It's more complicated than that."

"When is it not?"

A half smile, but Arthur was looking serious again.

"It's … possible," he admitted slowly. "You created the whole world to begin with."

"My subconscious. And I don't remember any of it."

"True," the other man conceded, sounding like he'd already known the point that was coming.

"And I get that theoretically, we were affecting the world in little ways, making all those books appear, that sort of thing, but that's just … casual. Something that could be chalked up to coincidence or good luck or intuition. This is a serious leap, Arthur."

"The biggest," the other man agreed seriously.

"If this is limbo and the subconscious and a vast mental construct, you should be able to do crazy stuff, right? Amazingly showy? Change the whole world?"

Something new appeared in Arthur’s eyes, an expression that hadn't been there before. A resolution, maybe, but one that scared Harry a little.

“Promise me something. When you realise that you’re dreaming, wake up.”

Harry just had time to begin contemplating the many ways in which that statement was wrong when the world broke apart.

Harry ended up flat on his arse on the ground—which was sand now, so at least the landing had been reasonably soft. The sky was rippling through a thousand colours and settling on a pink that resembled the most brilliant sunset he had ever seen. There was a castle flowing into existence in the distance— _flowing_ , the stone pouring into the proper form like a video of something melting done in reverse. It resembled Hogwarts from the films, a little, but was made of greenish stone that complemented the new sky. There was snow on the rooftops. A cliff was … growing before his very eyes, raising the castle higher and higher, and the ground level where Harry lay was sprouting lush tropical forest complete with humidity—rolling over him and clinging to his clothes—and wildlife—he could hear birds, insects, and something big in the underbrush—except for to his right where a valley had formed; from here, he could see the top parts of the unbelievable skyscrapers that rose towards the sky. They were too delicate and fantastically shaped to be manmade, spires that twisted into the sky like spun glass, all the colours of the rainbow.

He twisted round to see behind him and found a sparkling, crystal clear body of water—so clear that he could see the _city_ beneath its surface, domed buildings that clearly teemed with life. And was that a …mermaid?

 _Bugger him._ Cobb had been good. Ariadne had been better. Arthur … Arthur was incredible.

Arthur—

Eames turned back to find that the other man was no longer in front of him.

Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_. Arthur had _clearly_ been reluctant, and Harry had pushed anyways, and this was bloody limbo, and Arthur had just made him promise to wake up as though Arthur wasn't going to be here to ensure that he did, and—Shit, shit, shit.

Where could he have gone? Eames hadn’t been distracted for that long. He looked around frantically. The cover was dense here, growing denser by the minute, but surely Eames would have heard something, would have—

_Fuck me._

Eames didn’t think about it, he just scrambled to his feet and ran flat out, launching himself at the other man where he was _hovering_ out amongst those fantastic skyscrapers.

He’d thought that they were going to go crashing towards those very sharp spires. He hadn’t anticipated crashing _into_ the other man and just sort of … stopping. Hovering like he was in the middle of the air.

Eames was clinging for dear life to someone who might as well have been standing on a sidewalk. Arthur had swayed back the equivalent of a step or two with the force of the impact, but not nearly as much as Eames would have expected—though clearly anything he was expecting at this point was going to be debunked.

“Why aren’t we falling?”

“What’s gravity?”

Eames couldn’t tell if Arthur meant the question literally, or if he was implying that gravity was an arbitrary rule that could easily be lifted here, but Eames was distracted when he pulled back enough from the other man that he could see his face.

Arthur’s pupils were blown wide so that there were only little rims of brown around the edges. And Eames had a sense of how disconcerting it must have been for Arthur to interact with Eames day after day when Eames didn’t know him because there was no hint of recognition in Arthur’s face.

He wasn’t wearing a suit anymore, and the jeans and a t-shirt that had replaced the previous garb seemed particularly … inappropriate. He was barefoot, the jeans were ratty, worn into thin strings at the bottom, and there was a rip in the knee. The worn blue t-shirt had, of all improbable items, a cartoon of spider-man across it.

 _Not_ the sort of thing that he had worn even when he had been dressing down in Harry’s dream.

It was … distinctly odd. Still, though, Eames knew that you could lose yourself in limbo, had clearly done so quite spectacularly himself, so he wasn’t sure why he was so shocked by Arthur. Perhaps it was just because the other man was always _so_ in control. This was a complete departure.

And if Eames understood correctly, it was something that Arthur had been worried about, but he had done it anyway.

Arthur had lost himself here to save Eames.

It was in the eyes, Eames decided finally, or maybe the whole expression a bit, but definitely the eyes. Because it wasn't big pupils like he was on a mind-altering substance of some sort—and Eames had seen enough of that in his lifetime to know. That would be too easy here. It wasn't inhuman, because that would be very alienating. It was other, but it was … freedom. It was lack of inhibitions.

This was Arthur undone and at peace and just … gone somewhere where Eames was afraid he wouldn't be able to reach him again.

Given the other man's expression, he would actually spare a moment to wonder if he _should_ try to reach him, but he knew full well that Arthur had been trying to get them both out of here, that he had spent all his time here trying to attain that goal. Now that he couldn't, Eames had to step in.

Eames had no idea how much real time the other man had spent down here trying to convince Eames that this wasn’t reality, but assuming Arthur was right—and when was the annoying man _not_ —then they were treading on borrowed time as it was.

Eames didn’t have months or weeks—and maybe not even days or hours—to get the other man. Eames couldn’t navigate this world that Arthur was creating, and he had the feeling that he would never find him again if he lost him now.

“It’s time to go,” he told Arthur.

“Yes, go.”

Eames found himself drifting away from the other man without even realising he was moving, no visible or tangible external force acting on him, he simply suddenly wasn’t pressed up against the other man anymore.

“Shit!” he swore and leaned back in to clutch at the other man, who looked vaguely puzzled by the hands clasped around his wrists.

He looked the other man straight in the eye. “You promised me that reality was out there with Arthur alive in it.”

Arthur just kept staring and staring, and then he blinked, a slight frown puckering his brow.

“That isn’t what I said.”

“Yes, it is,” Eames insisted. “That’s what you _meant_. And I will hold you to it, do you hear me? We both leave, or we both stay right here.”

The frown deepened, and Eames only became aware that they’d moved again—together, at least—when his feet touched ground. Well, building, anyway. They were standing now on one of the upper levels of one of the skyscrapers, a balcony, he supposed, though you didn’t normally see clouds drift past when you were standing on a balcony.

"You can't stay here." Arthur was speaking slowly as though from a long way off, as though it were taking him a lot longer than normal to process anything. "You'll die."

"So will you."

"I'm meant to be here," Arthur negated simply. "Go home."

There was no way that Eames could beat Arthur with sheer creative talent here. And it didn't seem like the other man was confused about whether or not this was reality, he'd just decided he belonged here in limbo.

So Eames went with the tried and true. He glared at the other man and then he went and deliberately sat down with his back against the building and his arms crossed. It wasn't very adult, but it was quite pointed.

Challenging Arthur had _always_ worked.

The material of the building, he couldn't help noticing, was silky smooth and a little bit warm to the touch—almost more like it was living than a building material.

Had they _grown_? Not the point, clearly, but Eames couldn't help but notice the wonders of the world that Arthur had created in a blink of an eye.

Eames wasn't ever going to be able to accuse the other man of being lacking in imagination again. Actually, he wasn't going to be able to accuse the other man of _anything_ ever again if he didn't get him out of here.

"I'm going to sit here until I'm dead. Have fun out there. Feel free to come back and visit my body when you want a reminder of the real world."

Actually, he had no idea if your body stayed in limbo once you died. But now was really not the time to try to find out. There wouldn't be more experimenting here. So far, the body count in limbo—the people who went bat-shit crazy were another issue entirely—didn't make the possible return worthwhile even to a gambler like him.

Part of Eames _hated_ putting that worry and confusion back on Arthur's face, but he reminded himself sternly that it was for a good cause—the best cause.

"You and me, Arthur. You came to get me, and I don't go unless you go."

They were surrounded by a fantasy setting that was achingly beautiful and continuing to grow and shift even as Eames forced this standoff. The sky was growing more purple now—night coming?—and the sky to the left showed what he was pretty sure were two moons—too large to be Earth's satellite—appearing above the horizon.

Arthur's shoulders slumped, and his voice was vulnerable and childish when he said, "I can't stay?"

Eames climbed immediately to his feet, scrambling over to the other man and _hating_ how heartbroken he sounded.

"We can wake up together," he promised, infusing every bit of hope and certainty that he possessed into his voice. He held out his hand. "You and me?"

Arthur looked at him for an infinite moment. Everything was frozen in place in painstaking detail, and Eames knew that they could spend a lifetime here exploring everything that Arthur had created.

Eames knew that they could die here, and he was pretty sure that Arthur wouldn't regret it.

Eames was still on the fence. How exciting was reality, really? How bad would it be if they spent their lifetime here until the coma put an end to it?

And then Arthur put his hand in Eames's, and Eames stopped thinking. The decision had been made, and now there was only to act.

They moved as one, leaping off the balcony just as though they'd planned it, and this time gravity behaved just like normal, and they were rushing down and down and down.

Improbably, he and Arthur were still holding hands, and now there were feathers everywhere, white feathers that were swirling around them, obscuring their vision, and—

The first moments were terribly anticlimactic. Eames was aware that he was awake, and then he opened his eyes.

Quite simple, really, and not very interesting at all.

And then sensation rushed in.

He ached everywhere. His body felt heavy. There was all this extraneous noise. The air smelled sterile. It was too bright. It was too … everything.

And then the babble of noise crested.

"Eames?"

"Arthur!"

"Eames! Oh, my God!

"How could you—"

"Are you—"

"Eames!"

Eames found himself closing his eyes and trying desperately to shut all of it out.

"Out!"

Silence stretched, taut, and then—

"Arthur—"

"What—?"

"Out. Right. Now."

There was no mistaking the order, something very hard in the voice, and Eames listened with his eyes closed to the sound of clearly cowed people shuffling out of the room until it was blessedly silent.

Cautiously, he cracked his eyes open again.

Arthur was seated next to his bed, and Eames couldn't even _begin_ to understand or cope.

"What is it? Too bright? Too noisy?"

Eames struggled to articulate, his voice a croak. "Too … everything. Too nothing."

It was nonsensical and contrary, but Arthur didn't chastise him or demand clearer answers. Instead, he climbed into the bed and wrapped his arms around Eames, and Eames found to his surprise that he was able to breathe again.

The world was too much, or maybe it was too little—it was certainly not supportable just at the moment, but Arthur wrapped around him seemed to keep it at bay. The feeling of the warm body pressed up against his told him that he was safe, and Eames didn't question it right now.

He let the reassuring feeling of the other man's heart beating soothe him until, improbably, he fell asleep.

Eames had no idea how he would have survived without the other man. He'd regained his sense of self when Arthur had successfully made him realise that he was in limbo, but that didn't undo the time that he had spent there, didn't alter the shock of being back in the real world and finding that nothing worked the way that he expected it to. His body had been in a coma for almost three months, which meant that he was weak and uncoordinated and tired easily. Only he found himself often expecting the body that he still felt as though he had had for the last three months—for the last several years, because knowledge of being here in a coma for months was really only words since he could fill in all the things that he had been doing in that time.

Things that had involved bookshops and forging books and Arthur always there for him—just as Arthur was always here for him now. He never let Eames fall, not even when he pushed himself too hard in physiotherapy and his legs felt like jelly. He helped Eames get to the bathroom, helped feed him when Eames's fingers shook too much to hold his utensils. And he did it all unobtrusively.

He seemed always to know when it was too much for Eames, when he needed to order everyone else out of the room—including doctors and nurses—and when he needed to invite someone in for a visit because Eames needed to be distracted and reminded that a world existed outside of this room. Though he never said so, Eames was also sure that he was responsible for the fact that Eames had switched rooms three times so that he would have a different view from the window and subtly different configurations inside. The flowers that appeared every few days were probably him, too, but Arthur treated it as completely normal that they just kept showing up, and Eames didn't push the point.

He ate all of Eames's peas and carrots so that he didn't have to, sneaked out and got Eames good coffee when he was desperately in need of it. He ignored Eames when he got snippy and frustrated, gave him space when he needed it, and invariably curled up with Eames at night so that Eames would be able to sleep.

There were days where Eames felt like he was crawling out of his own skin, days where everything seemed so dull and lacklustre that he thought he would go insane, and days where everything was so sharp he felt like he would injure himself if he moved.

Arthur seemed to find no reaction bizarre, and while he seemed to have an uncanny ability to know when Eames wanted to be teased—a replica, at least, of their normal banter—he never mocked in any way, shape, or form, any reaction that Eames had right now.

He never acted as though Eames was taking him away from the rest of his life, never seemed to have something better to do, but he'd practically moved into the hospital.

As Eames began to feel more human and _alive_ again, however, he had the chance to start assessing the situation, to piece together what had happened, and to realise that he was so angry with Arthur he could barely see straight.

The other man had thought that Eames had betrayed him. That was why he had disappeared. He had faked it with Eames only long enough to get Ariadne to safety, and it had been she that he had come back to—and the fact that he had learned that Eames was in a coma was _incidental._ He had apparently felt guilty enough that he had come to get Eames.

He had behaved completely atypically in limbo, had claimed that he was interested but had ensured that nothing ever happened between them. Eames had inadvertently shared his soul with the other man, and Arthur fucking pitied him and felt guilty about what had happened. He hadn't _once_ brought up anything that had happened in limbo, hadn't implied by so much as a flicker of an eyelash that he cared about any of it. He just calmly and matter-of-factly took care of Eames, just like he'd taken care of Cobb, just like he took care of his team.

 _How_ could he think that Eames would _ever_ betray him? He had consigned Eames to the devil with no evidence, and this hurt far more than Eames ever intended to admit, especially to the man of fucking stone.

Yet another instance of Arthur being perfectly kind and perfectly patient, and Eames snapped.

"You said I had to come back here for me."

Arthur nodded, giving nothing away, being all silently fucking supportive, because that was what he did best, of course.

"Then why the fuck are you here all the time?"

Arthur blinked, looking thrown for the first time since Eames had been back in reality, and Eames pushed.

"If this was all for me and my life, then why have you grafted on like a sponge?" Arthur looked stricken, but Eames couldn't stop the words. Even as he hated himself a little for saying them, part of him was viciously delighted to be getting them out there, to be affecting the man that much. "Desperate desire to be the hero once more? Like to see me weak? Like to make me need you?"

Arthur got up and left without a word.

Eames told himself that he was well satisfied.

The truth, however, was that Eames was not only rather the opposite of well-satisfied—probably something closer to miserable—the following days gave him the chance to enumerate the _many_ ways that he was an idiot.

He wanted answers, and he wasn't going to get any of them if Arthur wasn't here to tell him. Only in the man's absence did he appreciate _all_ the things the other man had been doing for him. He was no longer distracted during his physiotherapy sessions, and that made them much more difficult than he would have thought. The first time he fell on his arse because Arthur wasn't there to catch him, he stayed down more out of the shock than the pain.

He had to insist on his own account that he was not going to see a psychiatrist—he hadn't even realised that Arthur was running interference on that front—and the nights stretched unbearably long. Eames wasn't sleeping well at all, and he no longer had treats to look forward to. (He'd had no idea how many little flourishes of food Arthur was slipping onto the trays until they came without them and he realised that there had not been a massive overhaul in the kitchen.) The doctors and nurses didn't seem nearly as inclined to listen to his desires to have them present or absent—nor his visitors, for that matter—and without Arthur as a buffer, they were asking a lot more questions.

Eames was bored and not coping very well with real life without the other man, and maybe that was actually the best reason for him to do it on his own, but even in the depths of his anger, Eames knew that you didn't do what he had just done to someone who had done so much for you.

Eames might question his motives and his judgement, might believe that their friendship had just come to an end, but Arthur had saved his life literally and comprehensively. Eames could have gone mad coming back from limbo, and Arthur had not just ensured that he came back to begin with, he had made the transition as painless as possible.

Could guilt really make someone do that? Pity? Eames hadn't felt a lot of either, not in the strength that would make him do something similar, anyway. But there was something that felt uncomfortably like guilt churning in his stomach along with the righteous anger when it became clear that Arthur was not coming back, that he'd driven the other man off completely.

So completely, in fact, that he'd done that vanishing into the wind thing again. When two weeks had passed, Eames knew for certain that the other man was not returning. He swallowed his pride and asked for Saito's help, but it was just like last time, when Eames had erroneously assumed that Collins had done away with the other man. He might as well have vanished off the face of the planet. And when Saito couldn't find you, that was saying something about your abilities.

There was at least a precedent, so Eames didn't think this time that something nefarious had happened, but he didn't have the slightest idea how to find the other man.

He checked himself out, insisting that he was well enough by now, and went to see Cobb.

Probably predictably, this did not go well. Eames was spoiling for a fight, after all.

"I have no idea where he is, and if I did, I wouldn't tell you. If he wanted you to know, _he_ would have told you."

"Don't you dare take that righteous tone with me," Eames snarled. "You're the one who took everything from him."

"What?" Utter incomprehension.

"Do you have any idea what it was like for him to lose Mal? Of course you don't," he scoffed at Cobb's look of shock, "because the moment she died, it became all about you, your grief and your mistakes and your love. And Arthur was right there for you all the time, picking up the fucking pieces. He took care of you, and he took care of your kids, and he kept you together long enough for you to lay Mal to rest."

Cobb looked like he wanted to protest but couldn't figure out where to start—which would be because there was nothing he actually _could_ protest.

"And the second you could get back to your kids, you just abandoned him," Eames snarled, everything he had ever wanted to say on this subject boiling up and out. "You let Marie tell him he wasn't welcome when he has dropped everything and devoted his entire life to those kids and to you."

A frown had added itself to the confusion on Cobb's face, and Eames wondered if this meant that the other man really hadn't known what his mother-in-law had said to the other man. Honestly, though, what the hell did _he_ think had happened, that the other man had truly gone from practically living with the kids to disappearing off the face of the planet because Cobb was back?

But then, since this was all about Cobb, the other man probably hadn't spared so much as a moment to consider the other man and his relationship with the kids. _Fuck_ but the man was clueless when it came to Arthur.

"I thought he'd want a break," Cobb tried to explain. "He didn't ask for any of this."

"No, he didn't," Eames agreed viciously. "So did you ever ask yourself why it was that he did it? Did it ever occur to you in that pea-sized brain of yours why he did all of it? Do you have any idea what it did to him every time your projection of Mal hurt or killed him? She was his friend, and you didn't even let him grieve properly."

Shit.

That wasn't what he'd gone to say at all. He was _angry_ with the other man, and yet he'd gone there and chewed Cobb out for him.

Cobb actually looked kind of chastened, and while this made Eames want to punch him in the face because it was so clear that most of this had never even occurred to him, Eames felt sort of satisfied that he'd been able to say it, that he'd made the man think about it.

"You used him when you had to and dumped him just as soon as you could."

"I wouldn't," Cobb protested.

"You _did_."

"And you think you did any better?" Cobb snapped. "Let him do everything for you and then drove him off as soon as you could cope on your own?"

It was a low blow, and they both knew it. Eames was so torn between anger and kind of believing that he deserved it that he didn't even know what to say. Although, he wasn't so sure that he was coping on his own.

Cobb let out a sigh. "I didn't think about any of it like that. I've always been selfish when it comes to my kids. It was not my intention to hurt him."

Fuck. Eames wasn't so sure that he could handle Cobb going all honest and emotional on him, and normally, he wouldn't hesitate to be an ass to kill the moment, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do so under the circumstances.

"That's why I'm looking for him."

"I really don't know where he is. When you find him, tell him I'd like to talk?"

Eames would take that as an apology—and he kind of appreciated the vote of confidence because he wasn't feeling all that confident himself at the moment. Research wasn't his strong point—not like the Point Man, anyway—and if Saito couldn't do it with all his resources, then Eames was effectively screwed.

But Cobb thought that he was going to find him anyway.

Eames needed to be a lot smarter than he had been so far.


	4. Interlude

_~ INTERLUDE ~_

Ariadne wasn't altogether certain how she felt about Eames showing up on her doorstep. She'd known that the possibility was there, and since she was torn between being annoyed that he'd taken so long and being impressed that he'd come at all, it came to a draw.

He looked much better than he had when he was comatose, but he still didn't look _well_ , or at least didn't look the way that she remembered.

She made him tea and let him rest for a bit since he looked a little ragged; Dom had texted, so she knew that he had been to see the man, and the flight from L.A. appeared to have done the other man in, though he didn't look ready to admit it.

"How am I supposed to find him when he disappears like the bloody Invisible Man—who, for that matter, is easier to find?"

It was perilously close to a full-out whine, and Ariadne sort of wished that she could have recorded it for Arthur the next time she saw him. She wasn't so sure he'd believe her if he couldn't hear it for himself.

"Perhaps if you didn't drive him away by being a complete asshole, you wouldn't have this problem," she pointed out with saccharine sweetness.

Eames stiffened and glared at her. "Don't act like he's an innocent victim in all of this. He actually thought that I'd sold him out."

She made a face. "Yeah, that was remarkably stupid of him. But most people can be remarkably stupid when their emotions are involved."

She doubted that Eames wanted to hear it right now, but honestly, it was one of the signs that had made her sure of how much Arthur cared for Eames. It was _such_ a moronic thing to believe, it sort of boggled her mind that the Point Man had fallen for it.

"He didn't give me a chance based on no evidence," Eames spat bitterly.

Ariadne bit her lip and contemplated her options. She was pretty sure that Arthur was going to be annoyed that she'd said anything—and equally sure that he would probably forgive her if she helped sort out the destruction of his relationship with Eames. That had to be worth betraying a confidence or two, didn't it?

"Look," she admitted, "I was never supposed to say anything, but I think that agreement was based on the misconception that caused this whole thing, so I'm going to tell you anyway."

Eames was staring at her intently now, eyes slightly narrowed, and she congratulated herself on getting his attention.

"Arthur deliberately misled you and Collins when he said that he went after the Mark."

"He Extracted the information."

"Yes, he did," she agreed, " _after_ he went to rescue you."

Eames froze before demanding, "What?"

She nodded. "It's all he cared about, Eames. He tracked you to that warehouse, leapt onto the roof, swung in through the window, and went under to get you. He never told me what happened when he was down there, just came up and told me to cover up the fact that he'd ever been there while he went to get the Mark. I gather that whatever happened down there didn't look good?"

It took Eames a moment too long to pass off his next comment as altogether genuine. "I was ambushed by someone who wanted to _kill_ Arthur; what was I supposed to do, say no and get all of us killed?"

She shrugged. "Logically, what you're saying makes perfect sense, but like I said, I don't think Arthur was thinking very logically."

"He's the most logical person I know," Eames pointed out waspishly.

"Still human, though," she argued back pointedly. "And he corrected his mistake as soon as he found out about it. I'm sure he'd take it back if he could, Eames. You should have seen him once he found out. He was frantic."

Eames snorted, his disbelief evident.

"Seriously," she said earnestly, adding with a laugh, "I had bruises from all the yanking he was doing on my wrist."

Eames was a tough crowd today, and Ariadne wanted to hit both of them over the head; she'd tried to talk Arthur out of disappearing this time, but he'd been equally stubborn.

"He spliced the line to get into your coma."

Eames sat up straight as though a poker had been shoved up his spine. "You can't splice a PASIV line. Do you have any idea what it could do to the people involved?"

She nodded. "Yusef and Dom explained at length. Arthur ignored me and did it anyway. He was getting you out no matter what."

Eames's eyes flickered closed for a moment. When he opened them, he looked directly at her with a more serious expression than she had ever seen before.

"Do you know where he is?"

"If you hurt him, I'll make sure you regret it."

Eames looked sort of like he wanted to roll his eyes, but he refrained, and actually said, "I don't intend to hurt him."

Under the circumstances, Ariadne supposed that that would have to do. They were doing a pretty good job of making a complete mess together.

"Then I'm going to tell you what he told me. You already know where he is."

"What?"

She didn't like his odds if he was as thrown by the comment as she had been.

"Arthur said that if you came by, I was supposed to tell you that you already know where he is."

"But if I knew where he was, I wouldn't come by."

She shrugged. "That's all I've got."

Eames swore under his breath and rose to his feet.

"All right, then. I'm off on a wild goose chase, apparently. If you see him, could you let him know that I'm looking for him and don't bin my mobile every five minutes like _some_ people so he can just call me at any time?"

She laughed and showed him to the door, stopping him with a hand on the arm. He looked at her quizzically, and she stood on tiptoe so that she could press a kiss to his cheek.

"Even Arthur is an idiot sometimes. He has faith in you, and you need to have faith in yourself."

He looked as though he considered and discarded several things before he leaned down to brush a kiss across her lips, toss her a wink, and saunter out the door.

_God, this was either going to be the best relationship ever, or one or the other of them was going to wind up in prison for murder._


	5. Part Three

_Part Three_

Though Arthur knew better than to think he knew exactly what to expect in dreams, he was finding the dream world less and less predictable these days. His dreams were becoming more and more bizarre—and he wasn't even working.

But he had known that no matter how angry Eames was, he would have questions eventually, and it didn't really come as a surprise that he had requested that they have the discussion in the dream world. It was absolutely expected that he wanted Arthur to be both the dreamer and the subject; he felt that they'd spent enough time in Eames's subconscious, and Arthur wasn't going to argue with him.

He knew, after all, that this was desperately difficult.

He had fought his first insane impulse to bring them to the bookshop. It was too early to be messing with Eames's sense of reality like that, and the other man might misconstrue. Honestly, though, Arthur had just been trying to think of the most positive space for them, and the bookshop featured prominently as the location where they had been happiest. By far, really.

Since that thought was nixed, he had brought them to somewhere new that had no associations for either of them.

He'd started with a park on a mild spring day. He had no idea what Eames wanted to do, and he didn't want the other man to feel as though he were boxed in. He didn't think that alcohol would help this conversation, and he'd emptied the park so that if Eames felt the need to kick the crap out of Arthur, there still wouldn't be any witnesses.

He was going to take it as a good sign that it didn't seem as though Eames intended to maim him in reality.

They were sitting on a park bench with a good foot between them, which Arthur had thought safest under the circumstances. Eames was wearing one of his most garish shirts, an overly busy paisley pattern in horribly clashing colours of maroon and lime green and fluorescent orange.

The grass was very green, there were big fluffy white clouds in a very blue sky, and squirrels chased one another up and down the trees in front of them. A couple dogs barked in the distance, giving the illusion that the park was populated without any people getting in the way.

Arthur had a coffee in his hand, and it told him that he wasn't quite as in control as he'd meant to be because the thought had only been half-formed. But he knew without looking that it had caramel and cinnamon and too much frothed milk, and he handed it to Eames, who hesitated a shade too long before he took it, telling Arthur that he was probably lucky he hadn't had it thrown in his face.

At least he didn't have to worry about dry cleaning bills in dreams.

Eames took a sip of his coffee and stared out at the landscape rather than looking at Arthur. Arthur took his cue from the other man and looked ahead of him as well.

"This is all looking very normal," the other man observed.

Arthur had promised himself that he would answer any questions the other man had, but the temptation to answer monosyllabically here was almost impossible to ignore.

But Eames shouldn't have to work for it, not after everything he'd been through. He might hate Arthur now, but he still deserved answers.

"It usually does when I'm in control of myself."

"I've never seen anyone create like that, and that includes Cobb and Ariadne."

"It's not a very practical skill."

"Sort of extraordinary, though."

Arthur cast a sidelong look at the other man but couldn't read anything from his face. That had sounded kind of … complimentary. There were other words for what he had done, words that had straightforward negative connotations.

There were so many places Arthur could go with that comment, and he finally went with what he thought might turn the conversation off him a little, or at least back to the direct subject at hand.

"The circumstances warranted it."

"You felt guilty for my being lost in limbo."

Arthur swallowed and admitted, "Yes."

Eames slammed the coffee cup down on the bench, and Arthur turned to find that the other man was glaring at him.

"You thought I sold you out!"

There really weren't words for how stupid Arthur felt about that. It was obvious that he had done, and it was still almost impossible for Arthur to nod his head and _admit_ his stupidity.

But Eames had been lost in limbo and had killed a man because of Arthur's mistake.

"It was stupid and inexcusable. I apologize."

Eames let out a huff of breath. "Fuck, it's harder to be angry with you when you're being all downtrodden and honest. Start being snotty and entitled again so I can be annoyed."

Arthur felt his lips tip up a little in spite of himself and saw an answering gleam in Eames's eyes.

Arthur made himself keep talking, knowing he was not off the hook just because Eames had allowed a moment of humour. He'd camped out in the other man's mind, and he needed to be brutally honest in return.

"Learning what I thought was a complete betrayal of the trust that I reposed in you was kind of … earth-shattering. I panicked and needed to reassess everything; disappearing was the only way I knew to fix the problem that didn't involve … anything permanent."

Eames's head tilted slightly to one side, and his gaze was sharp.

"Tell me, Arthur, how close did Collins and I come to getting a bullet between the eyes?"

Arthur sucked in a breath and let it out slowly before offering a slightly shaky nod. Fortunately, Eames didn't press the point.

"But instead, you disappeared off the face of the planet."

"That doesn't impact anyone but me."

"And everyone who's looking for you, Darling."

Arthur would never admit the warmth that blossomed inside of him at hearing that ridiculous term of endearment out of the other man's lips again.

"I hadn't anticipated most people trying for very long."

"And didn't mind if _some_ people wasted a lot of time and energy and money?" Eames asked pointedly.

"Not at the time," Arthur agreed.

"You are aware that most people can't poof into thin air at a whim?"

"I'm not most people."

"You don't talk about your training."

"It's hardly the sort of thing I want advertised, and I would think plenty of it could be inferred based on my abilities at work."

"There are abilities and then there are super powers."

Arthur laughed. "You haven't worked out by now that I like to be good at what I do?"

Eames rolled his eyes. "It's one of the most obvious things about you."

"So when I believed that I'd misjudged everything I knew about you, I corrected rather severely."

"Facts were pretty thin to the ground for you to have so little faith in me."

"I forgot how good you are at forging."

"That's insulting, you know."

It was said very mildly, though, and Arthur's lips tipped up.

"You sounded very convincing."

"'An eavesdropper never hears anything good about themselves'," Eames quoted.

Arthur sighed. "Ariadne?"

Eames nodded. "I'm still trying to work out how you heard everything, though. Collins designed it so that we wouldn't be overheard, and the only person—"

Eames cut off abruptly, straightening as though he'd been electrified, and Arthur just sat there and waited for the shit storm to start.

The other man erupted off the bench, stalked away six steps, and then whirled back to get in Arthur's face and demand, "What was I, then? Cheap labour when you didn't feel like it? Someone to laugh at afterwards?"

Arthur frowned. "You know you're the best, and I'm not a forger."

His definite words appeared to mollify the man a little, for he backed up a bit and sounded less enraged when he spoke again.

"You certainly didn't look like _you_ down there. Not unless there's a sex change you've forgotten to tell me about."

Arthur's lip curled up. "That would be a less complicated answer."

An eyebrow rose. "I'm all ears."

Arthur drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Hers is the only other form I can take, and no one else knows. Not Dom, not even Mal. I never use her for work, never when I'm sharing a dream."

"And yet…." Eames trailed off leadingly.

Arthur stilled the urge to squirm with an effort and swallowed against a constricted throat. "I thought you were being tortured or killed."

Eames sat down on the bench again, only a great deal nearer than he had been before.

"You're very hard to work out, Darling. You blow hot and cold more effectively than central air."

Arthur snorted, and Eames's lips tipped up.

"Not really," Arthur corrected. "You told Collins exactly right. There isn't very much I won't do for the people I care about."

"You're telling me we're _friends_."

Arthur nearly laughed at the distaste that Eames had infused into the one word.

"I spent all my time in limbo flirting with you. I think it's been blown out of the water, Eames."

"You didn't even want to kiss me in a dream!" Eames snapped.

"Didn't want to kiss you?" Arthur made a choked sound in the back of his throat. "I wanted to kiss you so badly I could barely see straight. It took me weeks to be sure that when I saw you again, I wasn't going to forget who I was and the fact that I needed to rescue you."

Eames eyebrows had drawn together in a scowl. "If that's the case, then why didn't you bring it up in reality?"

"When?" Arthur demanded incredulously. "While you were in the hospital recovering from a life-altering event with serious physical consequences?"

Arthur found himself quite suddenly on the ground with Eames on top of him.

"You are so fucking noble, Darling."

Any response that Arthur might have had to this was swallowed by Eames's mouth over his.

It was everything that Arthur wanted it to be. He was in the right body, and while they hadn't clarified everything, they both knew that they wanted this. And Eames was a fantastic kisser, something which Arthur had already known but which he got to appreciate to the fullest now.

It had been a long time since Eames had been on top of him like this; pressed up against the other man in bed when he was recovering had sometimes been a bit torturous from Arthur's point of view, but it had really been so non-sexual because the man had so clearly just needed help that it didn't fall into the same realm at all.

Eames was much more recovered than he had been, and here in the dream, he remembered himself as he usually was, meaning everything worked just the way that it was supposed to.

When they needed to breathe again, Eames drew back to say, "You could have saved yourself doing a runner if you'd mentioned you'd like to talk about it when I was feeling well."

"You might have saved me two runners if you'd mentioned what you were doing after I refrained from shooting Collins."

"What do you think I was doing?" Eames demanded, sounding affronted.

"Trying to get into my pants?" Arthur thought that had been very obvious.

Eames rolled his eyes. "You always leave after a job, and you have never accepted my invitation for company. You didn't strike me as a bloke who shags and runs, and that would have given us the opportunity to figure out a game plan."

"Huh." This possibility had definitely not occurred to Arthur. "That was a good plan."

Eames leaned down to kiss Arthur again, though this kiss was much more fleeting before he rose to his feet and offered Arthur a hand. He allowed the other man to pull him up.

"It's a bad sign when you want answers more than you want sex, isn't it?"

Eames laughed and pulled Arthur back onto the bench. Their thighs were pressed together now, and Eames hadn't let go of Arthur's hand.

"I want a relationship more than I want sex," Eames corrected.

There was really no possible way that Arthur could respond to this other than to climb on top of the other man and try to examine his tonsils. Eames's hands slipped altogether lower than was polite, and Arthur tried simultaneously to deepen that contact and grind down against the other man.

"Was I saying something?" Eames asked when they came up for air.

"You very sensibly wanted to get some of our issues sorted," Arthur admitted, moving to sit back down.

Eames tightened his grip to hold Arthur in place. "Sod sensible."

"Sex can be the next order on the agenda."

The other man laughed and let Arthur climb off of him.

"I never thought I'd hear you say that."

"Dream a little bigger, Darling," Arthur repeated smugly.

This surprised a laugh out of Eames, though he sounded almost rueful when he admitted, "There were times where I thought I was dreaming pretty big as it was."

"I don't like to be a notch in a bedpost."

"It came across a little more as dismissive and occasionally homicidal, in case you were wondering."

"If I hadn't cared, we would have gone to bed the first time you called me 'Darling'."

Eames positively crowed with delight. "I _knew_ you liked it when I called you 'Darling'!"

Arthur's lips twitched, amused by just how pleased Eames was. "I'll deny it if asked."

"Of course you will, Darling." Eames tacked the endearment on with obvious relish.

Arthur resigned himself to never again hearing his actual name out of the other man's mouth. It was remarkably easy to accept when he knew that the other man meant it.

Eames sighed and admitted, "I knew you well enough that I should have expected you to be suspicious about all of it, really. But I thought I'd have a little more time."

"I should have thought about it rationally. You should never have been put in that position," Arthur apologized.

Eames shook his head. "Oh, don’t blame yourself for that one. It was never going to end any way other than a bullet to the head once he was stupid enough to tell me that he intended to kill you. He was a crap judge of character for an Extractor."

Arthur didn't think Eames could be quite as blasé about it as he was claiming given that he had built himself a prison sentence in limbo, but they all had the feelings they didn't want to share.

"I still…. You didn't have to, and it means a lot to me that you went after him."

"Just because Cobb persists in having his head stuck up his arse doesn't mean that the rest of us don't care for you, Arthur."

Arthur stiffened and warned the other man, "Don't go there, Eames."

Surprisingly, Eames looked a little … sheepish? "Kind of already did. Cobb wants to talk to you."

Arthur let out a big huffy sigh and tried to pretend that he wasn't kind of touched. Eames did this ridiculous thing where he looked at Arthur with puppy-dog eyes and then beamed when he realised that Arthur wasn't actually that upset.

Arthur rolled his eyes but couldn't help but smile back. God, he was going to have to find a backbone somewhere, or Eames was going to get everything he wanted all the damn time.

"Well, he's going to have to get into line."

Eames's eyes flashed.

"I suppose you'd object if I ripped all your clothes off while we had our discussion?"

"I don't think there'd be a lot of discussion if you did that," Arthur pointed out wryly.

Eames's gaze, which had been focussed on Arthur's lips, was travelling steadily downward, and his hands inched their way up Arthur's thighs. "Discussion is overrated."

"But there are still a lot of things that you want to know."

Eames sighed and drew his eyes back up to Arthur's face with what looked like a monumental effort. His hands stopped moving, but they weren't removed.

"Those two notions should not be mutually exclusive, Darling."

"So, you're saying that you're going to be so mediocre I can carry on a coherent conversation at the same time?" Arthur asked dryly.

Eames's jaw came close to falling open. An incredulous smile lit up his face. "You are in for the ride of your life."

"I'm looking forward to it," Arthur admitted with a grin of his own. "But I'd go into it with a clearer conscience if I knew I'd answered all your questions to your satisfaction."

And once he was sure that Eames still … cared. Arthur hadn't had any intention of saying it out loud, but he was pretty sure that his face had given too much away, because Eames suddenly looked a lot more serious.

"You were telling me about the pretty blonde."

Arthur rolled his eyes at the obvious line of inquiry, but conceded, "She probably will explain everything, in the end." He hesitated for a moment, and then told a story that he had never told to everyone—not the whole story, anyway. "When I was eight, my parents and I were in a car crash. They died on impact, and I ended up in a coma."

Eames's fingers had tightened, digging into Arthur's thighs. Clearly, this wasn't at all what he had been expecting.

"I had some pretty severe head trauma, and I think my subconscious knew that my parents were dead and was trying to protect me." He swallowed, finding this harder than he'd thought he would. "I got totally lost down there. You saw the sort of stuff that I did. I could have stayed there forever."

"But here you are," Eames prompted gently when Arthur froze, sliding his hands down Arthur’s thighs in a move that was curiously un-sexual.

"Here I am," Arthur agreed, grateful for the nudge, "and that's thanks to Hope."

"How did hope help if you were happy down there?"

"The 'pretty blonde' is named Hope."

"Ah." Eames looked a little chagrined again, and Arthur wondered if it was a mark of Arthur’s honesty now or the fact that they'd spent so much time in limbo together that Eames seemed to be so much more willing to show Arthur genuine emotion now. "I'll stick to mentioning her eyes from now on, yes? Her nice personality?"

Arthur laughed. "You haven't been on her bad side. I hated her for quite a while."

"I take it she's the one who got you out of limbo?"

"Not the way you mean, but yes."

Eames looked puzzled now. "How many ways are there? My brain's going to explode if you tell me I'm a mental construct who's been in limbo with you since you were eight."

Arthur rolled his eyes, impressed with the way that Eames could make him feel better with irreverence even when he was talking about something as serious as this—and without making Arthur feel as though the other man wasn't taking it seriously.

“She forced me out of limbo.”

Eames frowned. “No one can force you out of limbo. You have to—Ah.”

 _You have to do it yourself._ It was why Dom couldn’t have just killed Mal in her sleep and woken them up in reality. Why he’d needed to make Saito aware of the truth. Why Ariadne and Fischer had jumped together.

And why Hope wasn’t a real person, or Arthur would have died or gone insane.

“She’s, uh, sort of like Dom’s projection of Mal, I guess. Has her own personality and agenda.”

“But she was trying to save you,” Eames pointed out gently.

Arthur nodded stiffly. “I really didn’t want to leave. And when I woke up in a world where I was weak and alone and a child, all I wanted to do was get back. I had foster parents for a bit, but I wasn’t really … coping well. Ended up in a home and spent all my time and energy trying to figure out how to get back there—and get around Hope, because she had warned me that I wouldn’t be able to find it and get past her easily. I think it was her way of making sure I didn’t just walk in front of a bus or take a header from a building or something.”

If he’d been sure he could have got back to his world, he would have done it. Eames’s hands had tightened on Arthur’s thighs again, so Arthur was pretty sure the sentiment had been communicated.

“I had to get creative. I spent the next ten years learning everything there was to know about comas and lucid dreaming and altered states of reality. Got my hands on a PASIV and started experimenting.”

Eames was frowning. “It wasn’t declassified before you turned eighteen.”

“No,” Arthur agreed.

“Shit, Darling,” Eames swore, and there was a great deal of admiration in his voice. “You stole a PASIV from the military before you turned eighteen?”

“I was pretty desperate,” Arthur conceded with a shrug. “I spent a long time with the machine on my own, but it was never right. I could make changes and creations, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t home. So then I thought using the PASIV with someone else in a coma would get me to the right level and bypass Hope. But it wasn’t my world, and it wasn’t very…. It was a lot less pleasant than mine, and it was like he was trapped, not happy there. I tried to get us both out.”

Eames tugged Arthur closer and wrapped an arm around him, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. Arthur sighed and leaned into the other man, telling himself that he wasn’t snuggling and wondering who he was trying to fool. Eames felt fantastically warm, and Arthur was feeling very cold.

“He died.” Arthur forced the words out through a constricted throat. “For the first time, I started to think that maybe locked in my own head wasn’t where I should be.”

Eames had started running his fingers through Arthur’s hair, destroying the work that the gel had been doing. It was rhythmic and soothing—and seemed to indicate that Eames wasn’t running away from him in disgust. Arthur kept talking.

“At that point, I came under some … professional scrutiny, and once it became clear that I was far more knowledgeable than any of their so-called experts, I got pulled in to be part of their nascent dream work department.”

The hands in Arthur’s hair stilled suddenly, and Arthur, uncomfortable, pulled away from the other man.

Eames was staring at him like he’d never seen him before. “You’re a spook?”

“I was, yes,” Arthur admitted stiffly, a sick feeling churning in the pit of his stomach.

“And you actually wander around in a suit all the time?”

Arthur was spared the necessity of speaking by Eames dissolving into laughter, clutching at Arthur as he was altogether overcome by his mirth.

A tight constriction eased inside of Arthur as he realised that Eames simply had a questionable sense of humour rather than repudiating Arthur because he’d worked for a questionable governmental authority.

Eames wiped tears out of his eyes and got himself under control with an effort, still chuckling periodically and muttering under his breath about spooks.

Arthur weathered the storm, still massively relieved but feeling that he needed to hold onto his persona—and maybe a little annoyed that Eames found it that funny. He _liked_ his suits and felt very professional in them, thank you very much. (Still, it was hard to be _too_ annoyed when the other man looked so relaxed and happy and amused.)

“Just so you know,” he informed the other man matter-of-factly, “you’re never wearing a horrible shirt again.”

“Going to keep tearing me out of them, Darling?” Eames asked with a leer.

“Oh, it’s not going to be nearly that fun for you,” Arthur said smugly.

Eames raised an eyebrow.

“Looked at what you’re wearing recently?”

Eames looked down at himself and then his head snapped up with comic speed.

“You can’t alter _me_!” he yelped.

“Oh?” Arthur asked with mock innocence.

He let the suit fade away into the clothes the other man had come with—except that the hideous print had been replaced with a nice solid blue (that happened to match Eames’s eyes, but Arthur wasn’t going to mention that).

Eames still seemed shocked, and Arthur took pity on him.

“You can change it back if you concentrate hard enough.”

Eames stared down at the shirt until it became flamboyantly colourful once more.

He looked up at Arthur again.

“I didn’t think that could be done.”

“We’re all just projections of ourselves down here.”

“Well, sure, but I’m supposed to control my projection of me.”

“And you do. Something integral like your face, I can’t change—unlike you—but your clothes are ephemeral. I control what I see, and I spent an eternity creating a world I wanted to live in, altering anything and everything with a thought.”

“How many abilities do you hide on a regular basis?”

Arthur shrugged. “I don’t really keep track. I know what people can generally do in dreams, and I know what abilities it’s safer if others never start experimenting with. I do my best to protect people that way.”

“You tried to keep Mal and Cobb out of limbo,” Eames observed shrewdly.

Arthur looked away. “They loved experimenting together, and they were getting there so differently from me, and it was the two of them, and I … hoped that they would be okay. I tried to warn them of the dangers of what lay deeper, but I didn’t tell them why specifically, and if I had—”

Eames cupped Arthur’s face with his hands, making Arthur look at him. “She would still be dead, Arthur. You know both of them, probably better than anyone. They were stubborn, and there was nothing they didn’t think they could accomplish. They would have told you that the situation was different, that you were alone and a child. They would have wanted to pit their intelligence against that problem. You could never have stopped them—and they wouldn’t have taken you with them.”

Arthur’s eyes flickered closed, escaping from Eames’s bright eyes that saw too much. Arthur wanted to believe him, but he wasn’t sure that he could.

Eames leaned forward so that his forehead was resting against Arthur’s, too close to stare at one another now, giving Arthur the distance he wanted—as well as the continued closeness.

“I don’t think you hold any responsibility there, but even if you bear the smallest portion, you have _more_ than made up for it. You moved mountains for him and the kids, kept them together when there was no logical reason for everything not to fall apart.”

Arthur drew in a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. “It was so awful,” he admitted to the other man, yet one more thing that he had never confessed to anyone else. “I remember being like her, so desperate to get somewhere else. She wanted to go back to what she thought was reality; I wanted to go back to the dream…. She lied, like I did, pretended to be placated for a little while, but never changed her mind.”

“She didn’t have Hope.”

“I tried. I tried to convince her. I talked her out of slitting her wrists and carbon monoxide in the car. I don’t think Dom ever found out about the pills and getting her stomach pumped. Pulled her back from oncoming traffic, caught her when she claimed she tripped at the top of the stairs, and _tried_ to get her to see someone.”

“Jesus Christ,” Eames breathed against Arthur’s face.

Arthur kept his eyes closed and concentrated on the feeling of the two of them touching.

“I tried to get her to believe in Cobb and the kids and me, just like Cobb did, but there was still that look in her eyes sometimes, and then Cobb called and—”

He broke off, unable to continue, and Eames pulled away to snarl, "I should have broken his face."

“It wasn’t his fault,” Arthur protested.

“I’m not ever going to try to go there, Darling; I’m talking about what happened afterward. You shouldn’t have had to keep this all inside for him.”

“Not for him,” Arthur murmured almost voicelessly.

“Ah.”

Arthur snorted and pulled away far enough to look at the other man.

“I’m not in love with her.”

Eames didn’t say anything, which Arthur could tell was his attempt to be diplomatic. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Eames’s in a firm but chaste kiss.

“Not really interested in women like that. I loved her, but she was the first true friend I’d had since I was eight.”

"That's—"

"Sad, I know."

"I was going to say lonely. I'm glad she was there for you."

"She came up on the radar, and I was sent to assess what sort of a threat she was. I knew immediately that she outstripped the abilities of the vast majority of our agents. But she was … nice, and the agency and I had begun to have ideological differences with regards to the dream work. So I took a chance and offered to throw in my lot with hers. She thought I was wasted as a _phantôme_ and accepted."

"I wouldn't think that the Agency would just let you go like that."

Arthur eyed him, and Eames scoffed. "You _didn't_."

"She helped me perform the extraction, enough to be sure that they'd never come after me and giving me the time to perform a full wipe of the soft and hard copy."

"Shit, Darling. It's like finding out you're Spider-Man."

Arthur raised an eyebrow, not altogether getting the comparison.

"Well, see, you're all cool and efficient but _normal_. A little bit repressed and sort of mysterious, but that's just part of the fun. Only then I find out that you're a dream super ninja performing extractions on the CI-fucking-A."

Arthur waited for the punch line.

"It's incredibly hot."

He laughed, pleased that Eames was taking this so well.

Eames tugged him in for another kiss before asking, "Any other super powers I should know about? Shoot web out of your wrists?"

"Technically, the webbing isn't a superpower. Contrary to how it's often portrayed in films, it’s just tech that's attached to his wrists. He runs out all the time in the comic books."

Eames stared at him steadily, and Arthur felt a blush heat up his face. Eames's lips tipped up and then he tugged Arthur in for another kiss.

"That's quite possibly one of the cutest things I've ever witnessed, my little comic book geek."

"Do you have a death wish?" Arthur asked calmly.

"If I get to hear you go all geeky again? Quite possibly."

Arthur glared.

"Okay, okay." Eames raised his hands in an "I surrender" gesture but let the matter go with the air of a man who was going to bring it up again at the next available opportunity. "X-ray vision? Leap over tall buildings in a single bound?"

Arthur signed and rose to his feet. He really wasn't going to get a better chance than this.

"I stopped trying to get back into limbo. I didn't see Hope again, but occasionally I'd see … traces of her. And once we'd reconciled, I discovered that when I was in regular dream levels, I could appear as her."

"Which you only do when I'm in trouble," Eames pointed out promptly.

"You are _so_ close to getting punched in the face," Arthur warned the other man.

Eames just sat on the bench looking all smug and _right_. So Arthur shifted. Eames's lips tipped up into a lazy smile.

"Just as lovely as I remember—and it really is such a relief to know that I wasn't attracted to anything in _that_ man's mind."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Do you think we could stick to the point?"

"You mean you weren't trying to show me what a sexy woman you make?"

"I was showing you that I'm not a woman at all."

Eames's eyes made a very obvious perusal of Arthur's currently very female-looking form. Arthur waited until the other man's eyes made it back up to his face, the look of challenge in them clear, and then he launched himself into the sky, wings unfurling and carrying him aloft before he twisted and swooped back down to land lightly in front of Eames.

The man's jaw had actually dropped open.

"You're an angel." He sounded completely dumbfounded.

"Hope is my guardian angel," Arthur corrected as he changed back into his regular form.

"An _angel_."

Arthur was sort of regretting showing off now. But he hadn't wanted to hide anything from the other man, and if Eames was going to decide that this was all too much for him, he'd really prefer that the other man do it sooner than later.

He nodded in response to the other man's comment and just sort of stood there, awaiting a verdict.

"Can you carry me?"

Arthur blinked at him. Eames shot him a scathing glance.

"Can the two of us fly?"

 _Oh_. Arthur had had altogether improbable images of him scooping the man up in his arms like he was going to … oh, carry him over the threshold or something, and he'd gotten altogether distracted.

"I have no idea," he admitted and reminded the other man, "It's never been anyone but me."

There'd been projections, sometimes, and Arthur had launched himself to the warehouse window with that one subcon, but sustained flight?

It had never crossed his mind.

"Curious?"

Now that the other man had brought it up?

Eames grinned at him, rising to his feet, and Arthur became Hope once more.

"You realise this could end in tears?" he felt compelled to point out.

"It's a dream, Darling. Live a little."

"I'm going to regret saying this, I'm sure, but wrap your arms around my waist. Don't want you to get in the way of the wings."

Eames wrapped.

"My _waist._ " 

Eames corrected his grip reluctantly. Arthur tugged them together, wrapping his own arms around the other man's back. Hope's breasts were now squashed between them, and Arthur was reminded of how weird this was. They hadn't been quite this intimately twined when they were dancing in Collins's dream.

"Crouch a little." Arthur did so to illustrate, and Eames mirrored his movement. "I'm going to count to three, and then we're both going to kick off from the ground as hard as we can. Ready?"

"I was born ready."

Arthur duly counted down and kicked off with Eames. As Hope's wings unfurled, he knew that the weight was _all_ wrong, but he flapped anyway, big sweeping strokes of his wings as hard as he could, reminded of those early occasions when he had first shifted and had needed to practice to even get off the ground and not wobble and drop at the slightest change in wind or when he got distracted. Eames was clutching at him, holding too tight, but then he realised that he had the other man in a death grip, too.

He went higher and higher so that he would have room to soar and could possibly relax a bit and not just squeeze Eames to death.

The sun felt warmer up here, the breeze different, somehow, when you were flying through it and not attached to the ground at all. He wasn’t nearly high enough to worry about thinning oxygen, and since Hope wasn’t human, Arthur found that when he wasn’t overreacting, it was possible to hold Eames up without feeling as though he was going to drop him at any moment. They still needed to keep a pretty tight hold on one another, but it started to feel a little more natural.

Eames was looking around himself curiously, peering at the large park and the city that was laid out below them in a very organised grid.

Eames leaned closer to speak in Arthur’s ear.

“You are _such_ a perfectionist, Darling.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Arthur said with mock affront.

The other man laughed. “But you could do anything here. Why do this?”

“Because it gives nothing away. Because it means that I can navigate the city with ease.”

“Who are you running from here?” Eames pointed out as though Arthur had missed the obvious.

“It’s always good to practice."

"I dare you to do something wild and crazy."

Arthur twisted and dove straight down, and Eames let out the most adorable yelp as he clutched desperately at Arthur. Arthur laughed in sheer delight at the rushing wind and the energy of it all.

Hope levelled out altogether closer to the ground than Eames was comfortable with if the fingers digging into Arthur's skin was any indication, and then Arthur was soaring upwards once more with great sweeping motions of his wings, carrying the two of them aloft and reflecting that that had been kind of fun.

"Give a bloke a little warning next time, would you, Love?" Eames requested, sounding a little queasy.

Arthur just grinned at him, and a reluctant smile was tugged out of Eames as well.

"All right, I asked for that," he admitted.

Arthur smiled even more brightly, and a light that Arthur recognized blossomed in Eames’s eyes.

“If you don’t want to get shagged in that form, you’d better get us to solid ground right now.”

Eames started when his feet touched something solid, and he looked round himself in wonder.

“I always wanted to do this,” he said with awe.

“I was eight,” Arthur reminded him softly.

Eames whirled around again, because Arthur was himself once more, and he’d dressed in jeans and a t-shirt in honour of the occasion, bare feet pressed into the improbably solid cloud beneath him.

“C’mere,” Arthur instructed, and went to sit on the edge of the cloud, legs dangling over the edge—because that was what he wanted to do, and that was reason enough to do it.

A little more cautious, Eames followed, eventually seated next to him, whatever he had been thinking apparently forgotten as he watched the world beneath them destroyed in a fiery spray of lava from the active volcanoes that now covered the surface.

No smoke or ash ever reached them on their fluffy white cloud. Once the world had cooled again, a new city began to grow there.

“That’s really quite extraordinary, you know,” Eames said conversationally, but there was something underlying his tone that told Arthur that he really meant it.

Arthur shrugged. "I was there for a long time with a child's imagination. There were no limits. Nothing I couldn't do."

"If that's the case, why can't you forge?"

"It never occurred to me as a child. I didn't want to be someone else, not like that. I enjoyed changing the world around me, but I didn't look in mirrors. I'm not sure I _looked_ at myself the whole time I was there."

"Now, then," Eames pressed.

Arthur wondered why this bothered the other man so much. "Apart from needing the raw ability and possessing the requisite amount of sheer animal magnetism?"

Eames's lips tipped up, but he didn't say anything, telling Arthur that he really wanted an answer—an honest answer, so Arthur gave him one.

"To be a forger, I think you have to possess a fantastic sense of self. You have to really know who you are and be comfortable in your own skin to retain your identity in the face of so many transformations."

Eames was staring at him as though he'd never seen him before.

"Is that really how you see me?"

A little self-conscious, Arthur nevertheless nodded. He'd already made pretty clear how he felt about the other man in every other respect.

"Arthur." For once, Eames actually seemed to be at a loss for words. "Thank you."

Arthur'd had no notion of affecting the man that much; Eames always acted like he was the best, and he knew it.

But then he remembered a few of the things that Eames had revealed when they were down in his subconscious. Perhaps it had all come with more work than Eames had ever made it look.

He reached out and slipped his hand into the other man's, and they sat there for a few minutes in silence, watching the city grow beneath them, spires beginning to reach high enough now that soon they would approach the cloud level where they were perched.

"You underestimate yourself, you know."

Arthur looked over at the other man in confusion; Eames had said the words as though they were continuing a conversation, but it was no conversation that he was aware of.

"You came to get me in limbo. You remembered who you were, and you never once gave in to temptation."

Arthur frowned. "You had to drag me out."

"Because you sacrificed your freedom for me." Eames looked exasperated. "Arthur, you're not superhuman. You knew the dangers down there, and you came to get me anyway."

"Maybe I wanted to go back. Hope let me because of you."

Eames actually rolled his eyes. "Hope's part of you, remember? You went back because you cared about something more than a dream.”

Arthur opened his mouth, but Eames overrode him with a look of exasperation. “If you'd cared more about the dream than me, we'd both still be down there. You came back with me."

Arthur swallowed heavily, remembering with difficulty that moment where he had realised that Eames was going to die if he didn't return to reality, where everything had come back into focus long enough for him to decide what needed to be done, to make the choice that he had not made the first time.

He rallied with an effort, attempted to lighten the mood. "You're hotter than Hope is."

This surprised a laugh out of Eames, and Arthur found himself smiling, too. Eames squeezed his hand.

"Ready to wake up together?"

Arthur smiled.

"Yes."

Together, they leaned forward and tumbled into the air.


	6. Coda

_~ CODA ~_

Eames opened his eyes. He and Arthur had gone under on opposite ends of the couch with the PASIV between them since they had barely speaking to one another when they had entered the dream.

Now, though, they were both awake, and when Eames smiled happily at the other man, Arthur smiled back seemingly unreservedly.

"I think we've made it to the next order of business. What do you say, Darling?"

Arthur slipped the needle out from under his skin and began re-coiling the line to the PASIV.

"Honestly? I'm surprised you waited this long."

Eames tackled Arthur into the cushions. The PASIV slid off and hit the floor with a bang. To his pleasure, Arthur made no move to see if it was broken-.

Eames was still too thin, but he'd started to fill out again. It made him feel a little uncomfortable, but Arthur didn't seem to be complaining. In fact, it was a heated mash-up on the couch, movements that were really too hurried to be as coordinated and skilled as they should be, but no one seemed to mind.

Arthur looked at him sometimes as though he couldn't quite believe that Eames was here, and Eames didn't really understand how the other man hadn't worked out that _Eames_ was the lucky one.

"Come to bed," Arthur invited in a low voice.

Eames beamed.

There had been a time when he had not been able imagine Arthur issuing those sorts of invitations. Well, he could _imagine_ it, of course, but he honestly hadn't thought that the other man would really do it. He didn't think he'd met very many other people whom he had thrown himself at quite so assiduously who was interested—Eames had been pretty sure that he had been interested—but who had steadfastly refused to have anything to do with him.

Yet here he was in the other man's home—one of them, at least, and one that he'd hidden from the universe, to boot—and Arthur had just been the one to invite Eames to bed.

They scrambled up off the couch, but the movement to the bedroom was hampered by the extremely audible rumble of Eames's stomach.

Arthur looked at him pointedly, and Eames made a face and would have continued on to the bedroom, only Arthur stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"When's the last time you ate?"

The tone of the other man's voice was reminiscent of his time in hospital, and Eames realized that while there was a chance that he would be able to throw the man off, this really wasn't Arthur just teasing him for being ridiculous.

He sighed.

"I don't exactly remember?"

Arthur breathed out through his nose.

"Idiot. What do you want to eat?"

"You?"

Arthur laughed, grabbing up Eames's hand and changing directions.

"Salutary as that desire is, I'd rather get some food into you first—in the entirely regular sort of way, so don't even go there."

Eames opened his mouth to protest.

"You're still recovering," Arthur pointed out sternly.

Eames sighed and stopped trying to argue. The other man had come out of a coma at the age of eight. He knew _exactly_ what Eames was going through, and now that his stomach had reminded him that he needed food and been noticed, the feeling was repeating with some viciousness. Better, likely, to eat now then to be continually interrupted—not to mention the fact that lowering as it was to admit, Eames was not as strong as he normally was, and if he did something fatally embarrassing like collapse in the middle of sex with Arthur, he wasn't sure that he would survive it.

So into the kitchen they went, and Eames discovered that the pantry was surprisingly well-stocked.

"I had a lot of time here," Arthur said to his unspoken question. "So what would you like to eat?"

"Something fast?" Eames tried this time.

Arthur's lips tipped up.

"Preferably something that won't be destroyed if we get a little distracted at the same time."

Arthur laughed. "You're incorrigible."

"You're only just now working that out about me? Darling, that's pretty poor work for a Point Man."

"Are you aiming to make your own food?"

"You mean you'll only cook for me if I don't insult you?" Eames considered this. "Can I delay the decision until I've tasted something?"

Arthur laughed again, and on top of all the other reasons that he was happy that he and Arthur had got this sorted, the fact that Arthur was laughing again in front of him was enough to make Eames feel as though this had all been worthwhile.

It reminded Eames of their time in Limbo, and while plenty of it embarrassed him, it seemed as though more of it had been genuine on Arthur's part than Eames had suspected in those first horrible moments when he thought that Arthur had played him completely.

Arthur finally banished him over to the tiny kitchen table since he was getting in the way as Arthur prepared everything.

Though the longer Eames knew Arthur, the more he realised that the other man was capable of absolutely anything, it was still surprising to see a new skill blossom out of seemingly nowhere.

Surely there was a cap on talent?

But despite the fact that it felt like it should be incongruous, Eames saw Arthur deftly chop, mix, stir, sauté, and pan fry until, in less time than Eames had expected—though possibly that was partly because it had been so much fun to watch the other man—there were two steaming plates of salmon steak with mushrooms and onions, potatoes, and a salad with a homemade vinaigrette dressing.

Eames burned his mouth a little on the first mouthful, ignoring Arthur's admonition that it was hot.

"Shit, Darling," he moaned, "do you know how hard it's going to be not to insult you?"

Arthur rolled his eyes. "It'll be a good challenge."

Eames pouted, but this didn't have nearly the effect that he wanted.

"Nice try. Eat your dinner."

It wasn't as though there was any chance of his _not_ eating his dinner when it was this good and he was starving. Arthur looked bemused but didn't offer any objections to his accelerated inhalation of the meal—beyond an observation that if he choked, it was harder to have sex.

Eames slowed down a little.

"Is there anything you can't do?" he queried the other man.

"Any number of things, I imagine," Arthur answered. "But I try to have a certain competency with those that impact my day-to-day life."

Ri-ight.

The younger man's lips tipped up. "Still can't throw a dart to save my life."

This surprised a laugh out of Eames. "Or understand cricket?"

Arthur nodded.

Eames smiled at yet one more example that the other man had been honest with him in limbo—and admitted things that Eames was quite sure under normal circumstances, he wouldn't be volunteering.

"Can you throw a knife?"

"Of course."

"Yet you can't throw a dart?"

"Nope."

The quality of the reply said that he'd considered this before, and it hadn't helped.

"That's funny, Darling."

Arthur rolled his eyes.

"Perhaps I can teach you."

"You're welcome to try."

He sounded a little dubious, but the comment had nevertheless sounded open enough that Eames was pretty sure the other man would actually let him try, if he wanted.

It had certainly seemed so far that the other man was possessed of far more talents and far more abilities than Eames had realised. He'd be seriously concerned about what the other man saw in him except that Arthur had actually done quite a decent job of sharing that with him. It still surprised him, but it was hard to doubt given the other man's efforts and confessions.

Eames knew full well just what it meant that the other man had made these confessions to him. If it was stuff that even Mal hadn't known, that Dom didn't know, then it meant that he wanted a _whole_ lot more than just sex.

But he seemed quite eager about the sex, too, and it was such a relief to have them both on the same page about that.

Since Eames had made a concerned effort to inhale his food to get to the sex sooner, Arthur wasn't half done by the time Eames had cleared his plate, but he rose without protest and moved both their plates to the sink, and he seemed altogether unsurprised when this resulted in his being pressed up against the counter so that Eames could nuzzle his neck and rub all over him.

Arthur twisted around with the moves of an eel so that he was facing Eames and could wrap his arms around him and tug them impossibly closer and kiss him.

Eames was _all_ for that.

They stumbled through the hallways, taking a lot more time than they would have if they'd detached long enough to simply walk the few necessary steps, but Eames couldn't help but note that the very logical Point Man wasn't making any such suggestion.

It came as no surprise that the first article of clothing to be shed was Eames's shirt. Arthur seemed to take it as a personal offence every time he saw Eames in an obnoxious shirt, and Eames wondered if the other man realised that now that they had established that the way Arthur would deal with this was to remove the offending article—one way or the other—Eames was _never_ going to stop wearing them.

Eames noticed very little about the bedroom apart from the fact that it had a very welcome king-sized bed—a fact which he noticed only because his knees hit the back of it and he fell, sprawling, with Arthur climbing on top of him, and there was a lot more room to manoeuvre than there had been in that ridiculously tiny hospital bed.

Arthur was straddling Eames now, kissing him hungrily, and Eames gave himself over wholeheartedly. The other man's fingers were ghosting all over his chest and torso, seeming to delight in the bare skin that he was touching, and in retaliation, Eames got his hands under the back of the pullover that Arthur had on.

It wasn't quite the same as the suit—which Eames was going to fully enjoy peeling him out of—but Eames understood the context a lot better than he had in the past.

Arthur barely paused in his ministrations as Eames tugged the shirt off and happily discarded it over the edge of the bed. Naked Arthur was something he hadn't gotten to see _nearly_ enough of, and he was quite willing to spend as much time as necessary remedying this situation.

Arthur's mouth drifted off of Eames's, kisses pressed to the corner of his mouth, then his chin, tongue tracing a path down his neck, kisses pressed once more to the juncture of neck and shoulder. Lower still, nipping and kissing and laving with his tongue, and by the time Arthur reached his nipples, Eames was arching into the other man's touching and urging him on.

Arthur, predictably, would not be rushed, and continued on at his own pace no matter what Eames swore at him, but that was half the fun, of course.

Eames helpfully arched his hips so that it would be easier for the other man to remove his belt. The other man did so, but did not take the hint and offer any further stimulation to any of Eames's protruding bits.

He was equally hands off when he unbuttoned and un-zipped Eames's trousers, tugging them off and dropping them off the side of the bed so that Eames was finally completely naked.

"Darling, you're killing me," Eames whined.

A smile was all the warning he got before he was swallowed whole.

Eames bucked up into the wet heat with a strangled cry, no actual words making it out of his mouth.

At some point, the other man had definitely learned to suck cock, and Eames was kicking himself for not cornering the man in a dream _ages_ ago and convincing him to do something about all the UST.

It wasn't going to be unresolved for long if Arthur's expect ministrations were anything to go by, not given the amount of time it felt like it had been for Eames since he had had sex. Even just in reality, the number was scarily high, and if he added in all that limbo time—it still _felt_ real to his brain, after all, then the number was truly scary.

Of course, that just meant that they had a lot of time that they needed to make up for, and he had the feeling that Arthur was going to be more willing than he would once have expected to get on board with this plan.

Arthur's fingers came into play, teasing his balls and twisting to stroke at the sensitive skin underneath.

Eames groaned. "Darling, I'm not going to last much longer."

Arthur just hummed and sucked harder, and Eames stopped trying to resist the other man, arching more forcefully as he attempted to increase the stimulation, and Arthur skilfully rode out the motion, having apparently mastered breathing through his nose, sucking, blowing, and using his hands all at the same time.

"Arthur," Eames gasped as he came, but Arthur just swallowed him down, refusing to release him until Eames was shuddering with sensation and feeling blissfully shagged out.

His arms felt a bit like limp noodles, but he managed to tug effectively enough that Arthur knew what he wanted and moved up the bed so that Eames could lean up and kiss him, tasting himself on the other man's lips.

"Why the hell have we never done that before?" he asked when they drew back for air.

Arthur's lips were deliciously swollen, his hair dishevelled, and no one looking at him would be in any doubt as to what he had been doing.

"Because you have a questionable way of expressing yourself."

"Hey," Eames protested, "why is it my fault?"

Arthur's lips tipped up, but his eyes were very serious as he leaned in again to nip at Eames's bottom lip.

"You tried much harder than I did. We didn't do this sooner because I wasn't willing to take the risk."

Eames had sort of meant the question rhetorically, and he really hadn't meant to bring the mood down.

"From where I'm sitting, Darling, you took a hell of a lot of risks to get us here."

Arthur opened his mouth for what Eames was sure was a serious protest once more, and he wrapped his hand around the back of Arthur's neck and tugged him closer for a comprehensive kiss that would, with luck, at least pause the other man even if it didn't distract him completely.

When Eames drew back, though, it was to find that Arthur's eyes were gratifyingly clouded with lust, and Eames congratulated himself on a job well done.

"You're wearing entirely too much clothing," he told the other man, palming him through his trousers and making him hiss. "How 'bout you come put this to good use?"

Arthur was _so_ a warm-blooded male—not that Eames had really been in any doubt of that fact at this point. No matter how matter-of-fact and robotic he acted when he was on a job, he was still out of the rest of his clothes in nought point two seconds when faced with the prospect of more sex.

Condom and lube were retrieved from the bedside cabinet, and when Eames raised an eyebrow in a very exaggerated manner, Arthur rolled his eyes.

"I said I had a lot of time here. And I'd just spent a lifetime with you _not_ having sex. What do you think I was doing?"

Eames grinned, pleased.

"Then by all means, if you're so anxious, carry on."

Arthur eyed him for a long moment, and Eames realised he was actually hovering on the edge of not getting buggered, which had not been his intention _at all_.

Then Arthur's lips tipped up. "I'd say you'd better watch your tongue, but in this particular circumstance, I'd really prefer that you didn't."

This surprised a laugh out of Eames, who could be magnanimous when he was about to be fucked.

"C'mere and fuck me, then."

This had the salutary effect of one lubed finger and then two up Eames's arse, and he squirmed into the movement, trying to get the stretching over with much more quickly than Arthur seemed to think was advisable.

It didn't actually come as a surprise that Arthur was thorough and a gentleman, but Eames had been waiting for this for a very long time.

"Fuck me already, Darling."

Arthur's finger brushed across Eames's prostate again, and he sucked in a breath.

"Maybe I'm enjoying this part."

Arthur's eyes were practically glowing, so Eames really couldn't doubt it. He was pretty impressed with the other man's patience and self-control, too, because Eames was on the other side of an orgasm, and he was still finding this unbearably stimulating. Arthur had to be dying.

On the other hand, Eames had always been well aware of the other man's control, and there were very few occasions where he'd seen him lose it.

Eames was definitely going to have to work on that.

"Do you want me to beg?"

Arthur's eyes flashed, but when he leaned in to give Eames a kiss, it was surprisingly gentle.

He drew back and winked. "Not just now."

Oh, they were going to have so much fun.

Eames's question had had the desired effect, however, because Arthur's fingers were finally removed and replaced with something altogether larger. (The condom had been rolled on one-handed, but the hand had shaken a little, so Eames was pretty sure that the other man wasn't quite as in control as he was acting.)

Arthur had been the one to put the pillows under Eames's hips, so he knew the other man wanted them to be facing one another. He apparently still wanted to be in control of the encounter, however—or maybe he was just wise to Eames's tricks by now—because he had a very tight grip on Eames's hips to ensure that he buried himself inside of Eames on precisely his agenda.

Though Eames would never admit it to the other man, there was something about the torturously slow pace that made it all the more satisfying when Arthur finally bottomed out inside of Eames, as deeply buried inside of him as it was possible to be.

Arthur's eyes were burning.

"Darling," Eames couldn't help but repeat the question, "why haven't we done this before now?"

"I have no idea," Arthur admitted.

Eames could hear the strain in his voice, and he couldn't help but grin at both the answer and that sound of effort.

The burn from the penetration had eased, and Eames bucked up towards the other man. Arthur sucked in a breath.

"Fuck me, Arthur."

Arthur leaned down to mash their lips together, and Eames kissed him back hungrily. He reached for the other man's hips and wrapped his legs tightly around the other man, hooking his heels behind him. This gave him the leverage to really grind them together.

Arthur swore at him, which made Eames beam because you knew it had to be considered the beginnings of very good sex when the Point Man started getting mouthy like that.

The other man pulled back and then thrust forward firmly, burying himself inside of Eames once more, and Eames let out a huff of breath at the sensation. Arthur repeated the movement, changing the angle slightly, again and again until—Eames let out an incoherent noise of half-imprecation, half-praise.

It was Arthur's turn to smile, a lazy, heavy-lidded smile of pleasure that Eames had never seen before and wished to see again at the earliest opportunity.

As in all things, Arthur was both dedicated and talented. Now that he'd found Eames's prostate, he was determined to hammer into it with each stroke, leaving Eames to hang on for the ride, try to get impossibly closer to the other man, and drown in the sensation.

Fuck, if Eames had known that it was this brilliant, he would have figured out a way to make the man an offer he couldn't possibly refuse _ages_ ago.

Unfortunately, Eames wasn't superhuman, so his body hadn't recovered enough for him to have another orgasm yet. But the almost-too-much sensation was a form of torture that he would willingly undergo to see Arthur braced above him, sweat dotting his skin, a look of intense concentration on his face as he buried himself repeatedly in Eames's body.

Eames was certain that he'd never seen the man concentrated on something so intently before if it wasn't a job. The fact that he brought all of this to shagging Eames was brilliant and _such_ a turn on.

Eames began to rhythmically clench and unclench the muscles of his arse, urging Arthur closer and closer, watching and feeling with delight as the other man's thrusts became more urgent and less coordinated.

He dug his heels into the small of the other man's back, clutched at his forearms, digging his nails into skin, and met every thrust with a surge of his own, tightening his muscles as tight as it was possible to get him.

Once, twice, three times, and then Arthur broke apart on top of him.

Eames watched with awe, clutching reflexively at the other man as he buried himself inside of Eames and rode out his orgasm.

He looked, Eames realised a moment later, the same way he had in limbo at the end. He looked completely undone, blissful, and the fact that he had been able to recapture that feeling in this one moment with Eames was … unbelievable.

Eames was willing to devote the rest of his life to ensuring that Arthur experienced moments like these as often as possible.

Arthur had collapsed on top of Eames in a sweaty heap, which Eames relished altogether, but presently, he pushed himself up again on arms that looked a lot more shaky than they had a few minutes ago and tried to move away.

Eames tightened his grip.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked.

"Somewhere that doesn't avoid squashing you," Arthur proposed.

"Maybe I like you squashing me."

Arthur snorted, eloquently expressing what he thought of Eames's reasoning. "To take care of the condom, then, before we might as well not have used it."

The look Arthur shot Eames now was one of challenge, and Eames sighed theatrically and released the other man; it really wouldn't do any good if everything dribbled where they'd been trying to keep it from to begin with.

Eames both pouted and winced a little as Arthur pulled out. Part of him wanted quite nonsensically to keep them connected like that forever, and the rest of him couldn't help but react to the purely physical. Once the endorphins had tapered off, someone else's cock inside of you really did start to feel as though it was putting something too big where it didn't belong.

Arthur had caught the wince, though, and started to frown in concern, so Eames tugged him back down sharply and kissed him very firmly. There was a moment of resistance, and then Arthur had melted into him and kissed him back thoroughly. Harder to be upset when you were examining someone else's tonsils, and there was no way that Eames was going to let the other man think that he was anything but pleased with how this encounter had gone.

The other man finally drew back, panting once more, to actually dispose of the condom and wipe them both clean before he climbed back into bed and spooned at Eames's urging.

Eames had imagined, once upon a time, that this part was going to be a lot more of a battle, that he was going to have to fight Arthur every step of the way. He should have considered that once Arthur committed to something, he gave it his all.

Eames fell asleep to the soft sounds of Arthur's breathing.

In the morning, Arthur found that the world had not imploded. He and Eames had finally had sex, and, not only had it been fantastic, it appeared to have been life-altering only in the good way. Ninjas had not broken down the door; reality had not intruded to tell them that none of this was possible.

There was morning breath and limbs that had gone numb and some awkwardness about communal bathroom space, but it _still_ all felt right, felt like work that would be pleasing to resolve, neither a chore nor unrealistically perfect.

Arthur was falling in love with the other man all over again, and while he didn't think that they were quite at the spot to talk about it yet—though maybe this was just his cowardice talking—he was pretty sure that Eames felt the same way.

It was kind of awe-inspiring, actually.

Eames made coffee and Arthur made pancakes—and then sent Eames to snoop through the apartment, telling him that anything that wasn't locked was fair game, since he was going to burn all of them if they kept getting distracted like Eames seemed determined to do when he was in the kitchen with Arthur.

The other man returned a few minutes later, and Arthur was going to admonish him for having the attention span of a gnat when Eames held aloft what he had found.

"I thought this was a loaded die."

Arthur barely glanced at the small cube of red plastic, which he gathered Eames had thought was odd to find in the small bowl of clutter on the hall table.

"No."

He could actually hear Eames frowning. "How can you tell when it's reality?"

Arthur hesitated for a moment, reminded himself that he had essentially told Eames everything already, and it was actually safe to keep telling the truth here. It was hard to change the habits of a lifetime, but Arthur was more sure than he had been in a long time that it would be worth it.

“You think I don't know every minute of every day? It's not home, and I can't feel Hope beneath my skin."

Eames stood staring at Arthur for long enough that Arthur began to rethink his whole truth policy—only then he was suddenly being pressed up against the kitchen counter and kissed with a surprising lack of lust and a whole lot of … affection.

Arthur couldn't help but smile when Eames drew back, and since the other man was smiling as well, this was okay.

"We'll just have to see if we can't give you a better definition of home."

For the first time since Arthur had woken in a broken world at the age of eight, he believed that it was possible.


End file.
